Welcome! We hope you will enjoy using these reflections with us!
Reflection
This week’s reflection is by Stephen Rand, co-chair of the Jubilee Debt Campaign.
“Here there is catastrophic failure, brokenness, rebellion, crime and treachery. There are women of ill repute, foreigners, high-born and low-born. In fact, as the newspaper advertisement used to say, ‘All human life is here.’ ”
Stephen reflects on Jesus’ family tree and shows us where the story of advent really begins. Looking at Luke 3: 23-38 and Matthew 1: 1-17, we can see that the perfect man had a less than perfect family.
The birth of Jesus as a man, descended from a human family, gives us certainty that God’s promise of intervention in human history, giving life to restore life, will be fulfilled.
Prayer
Please pray:
These prayer requests come from Micah Challenge Peru
· Please pray that their next publication, “The poor will always be with you: theological reflections on poverty” (released on December 15), will awaken in its readers the desire to relate biblically and passionately to the fight against poverty in our communities.
· Please pray for the campaign’s next youth workshop on ‘Art and the Bible’ (Dec 16), directed at young people interested in music; may it generate in them creative ideas about how they can use their gifts in the service of God’s vision and commitment to those living in poverty.
Meditate on the Statistics
As you spend time in prayer and reflection, you may like to take a moment to silently understand with your heart the focus statistic we will include each week (see below). We are hoping that you will find this series of statistics a useful reference in preparing presentations.
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development.
Target 15: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.
‘Future debt payments for 29 heavily indebted countries have fallen by $59 billion since 1998, bringing their debt service to less than 7 per cent of export earnings. But for many poor countries, even this reduced level is too high.’
Source: The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006
http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress2006/MDGReport2006.pdf
Yours in Christ,
Regine, Jill and Michael
Please see List of Prayer Reflections
http://www.micahchallenge.org/global/prayer_resources/documents/SearchableFridayPrayerReflections.xls
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