Prayers of Lament and Confession for Jamaica, the U.S., and our world:

January 26, 2006

To present our time in Jamaica, our group created an abbreviated worship service focusing on different things we had seen and experience. Will and I worked on crime and poverty. Here are our laments and prayers of confessions:

How gated sits the city that once was full of riches.
How plundered she has become,
She that was beautiful among the nations.
Her people live in shacks,
Her streets are full of beggars.
She that was a jewel among the nations has become a vassal.
Forgive us Lord, for being complicit in economic policies that exploit the Jamaican people.

How long, O Lord?
How long must people live in house constructed of tin and steal power from the nearest pole?
How long must people wander the streets, peddling goods the world has no need of?
How long, O Lord?
How long must children attend schools with no books and carry drugs just to earn a living?
How long, O Lord?
How long will poverty exist in a world of plenty? How long?
Forgive us Lord, for ignoring the poverty that exists both here and abroad and for ignoring the part we play in creating this poverty.

They sit behind bars,
The days of their youth fast depleting.
Brothers, sisters, sons and daughters,
Caught carrying the riches of white powder,
Caught in the hope of promises for a better life.
Forgive us Lord, for caring more about punishing drug users by putting them in prison than we do about treating and rehabilitating them.

The have walled the city and set out all the dogs,
Yet still sons and daughters are murdered in the dark.
Guns come in the night across the water by boatfuls.
They flow across the land, leaving death in their wake.
The country sits weeping, for death seems never to cease.
Forgive us Lord for producing, supporting, and exporting weapons of violence that make murder as easy as pulling a trigger.

The roads to the coast mourn,
For no one comes through the country anymore.
Cruise ships disgorge people for hours on end,
But depart before the night falls.
Hotels stand gated against the reality of the streets;
Their guests lounge by pools and dine in private rooms.
And Jamaica is left unseen.
Forgive us Lord, for building hotels and resorts that are fenced off from the countries and cultures in which they are built, and for the cruise ships that dominate the skyline: portable symbols of wealth that stand in stark contrast to the surrounding poverty.

Cry aloud to the Lord,
O people of the earth.
Let tears stream down like a torrent,
Day and night.
Give yourself no rest,
For there is not justice in the land.
Forgive us Lord, for fencing ourselves off from the crushing and disabling forces of inequality and oppression that often seem to define our world.

Posted in faith by Sarah