CITIES

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From an essay titled
How to : Pray for Your City
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Within Canada we’ve been learning to pray, do mission and seek justice in our cities. Aaron and his community in the downtown east side of Vancouver have been praying and working with the poorest postal code in our country for many years now. They spend their days and nights living life with drug addicts and prostitutes. Jill and Kirk just moved into a community house in Hamilton, Ontario to pray and serve their city. They just spent the last 2 weeks praying in a Uhaul moving truck next to a youth center with anyone and everyone interested in joining them. Dave and Brian have been praying and working to change the city of Brantford. They have their church service in the old downtown mall with a prayer room storefront, have a BBQ every Friday night in the streets, are working to unite the churches in Brantford and they have even created their own super hero, Captain Kindness, who makes regular appearances at city events and leads random acts of kindness events. These are just a few of the stories of how we’re learning to pray and make a difference in the cities across Canada... and there is still much more ground to break!

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I leave you with this challenge... Wherever you are...

 I challenge you to get to know your city!

Take a walk, read, talk to people, learn what’s happening.... and then, as Jeremiah said, start to seek the welfare of your city. Pray for what you learn, and then take it

 to the streets and put it into action.

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Daria Nardozza

September 5, 2011
From the www.24-7prayer.com website

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When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices;

 when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy. 

 Proverbs 11:10

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A PRAYER FOR THE CITY

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God of peace, in Jesus you wept for the city,
you loved the city,
place of human greed, violence, wealth, and poverty,
but also a place of hope and human gathering.
We pray for New York City, for New Orleans,
and for their metropolitan areas,
that the needs of all for food, and shelter, and work,
for justice and dignity, might be met.
We pray that the diverse people living here
may join their efforts to seek the good of all.
Minister to these cities through the hands of your people,
as they feed the hungry,
heal the sick, and comfort the sorrowing.
We pray for people living in cities around the world,
who have come seeking to work and to survive.
We pray for refugees and for those who have been driven off the land.
May they too find what they need to live.
Keep alive in us that hope of the new Jerusalem,
of the city that finds its light from your presence,
and its joy in doing your will,
where tears are dried, and violence is destroyed.
Through Jesus Christ, Let it be! Amen.

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Ruth Duck 

 Touch Holiness: Resources for Worship

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Through the blessing of the upright a city is exalted.

 Proverbs 11:11

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MEN RIDING BIRDS, AFFECTIONATE BIRDS

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From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part II, 52, 1

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Primitive Man

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 From the time of man’s emergence from the animal level — when he can choose to worship the Creator — to the arrival of the Planetary Prince, mortal will creatures are called primitive men. There are six basic types or races of primitive men, and these early peoples successively appear in the order of the spectrum colors, beginning with the red. The length of time consumed in this early life evolution varies greatly on the different worlds, ranging from one hundred and fifty thousand years to over one million years of Urantia time.

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 The evolutionary races of color — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo — begin to appear about the time that primitive man is developing a simple language and is beginning to exercise the creative imagination. By this time man is well accustomed to standing erect.

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 Primitive men are mighty hunters and fierce fighters. The law of this age is the physical survival of the fittest; the government of these times is wholly tribal. During the early racial struggles on many worlds some of the evolutionary races are obliterated, as occurred on Urantia. Those who survive are usually subsequently blended with the later imported violet race, the Adamic peoples.

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 In the light of subsequent civilization, this era of primitive man is a long, dark, and bloody chapter. The ethics of the jungle and the morals of the primeval forests are not in keeping with the standards of later dispensations of revealed religion and higher spiritual development. On normal and nonexperimental worlds this epoch is very different from the prolonged and extraordinarily brutal struggles which characterized this age on Urantia. When you have emerged from your first world experience, you will begin to see why this long and painful struggle on the evolutionary worlds occurs, and as you go forward in the Paradise path, you will increasingly understand the wisdom of these apparently strange doings. But notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of the early ages of human emergence, the performances of primitive man represent a splendid, even a heroic, chapter in the annals of an evolutionary world of time and space.

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 Early evolutionary man is not a colorful creature. In general, these primitive mortals are cave dwellers or cliff residents. They also build crude huts in the large trees. Before they acquire a high order of intelligence, the planets are sometimes overrun with the larger types of animals. But early in this era mortals learn to kindle and maintain fire, and with the increase of inventive imagination and the improvement in tools, evolving man soon vanquishes the larger and more unwieldy animals. The early races also make extensive use of the larger flying animals. These enormous birds are able to carry one or two average-sized men for a nonstop flight of over five hundred miles. On some planets these birds are of great service since they possess a high order of intelligence, often being able to speak many words of the languages of the realm. These birds are most intelligent, very obedient, and unbelievably affectionate. Such passenger birds have been long extinct on Urantia, but your early ancestors enjoyed their services.

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 Man’s acquirement of ethical judgment, moral will, is usually coincident with the appearance of early language. Upon attaining the human level, after this emergence of mortal will, these beings become receptive to the temporary indwelling of the divine Adjusters, and upon death many are duly elected as survivors and sealed by the archangels for subsequent resurrection and Spirit fusion. The archangels always accompany the Planetary Princes, and a dispensational adjudication of the realm is simultaneous with the prince’s arrival.

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 All mortals who are indwelt by Thought Adjusters are potential worshipers; they have been “lighted by the true light,” and they possess capacity for seeking reciprocal contact with divinity. Nevertheless, the early or biologic religion of primitive man is largely a persistence of animal fear coupled with ignorant awe and tribal superstition. The survival of superstition in the Urantia races is hardly complimentary to your evolutionary development nor compatible with your otherwise splendid achievements in material progress. But this early fear religion serves a very valuable purpose in subduing the fiery tempers of these primitive creatures. It is the forerunner of civilization and the soil for the subsequent planting of the seeds of revealed religion by the Planetary Prince and his ministers.

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 Within one hundred thousand years from the time man acquires erect posture, the Planetary Prince usually arrives, having been dispatched by the System Sovereign upon the report of the Life Carriers that will is functioning, even though comparatively few individuals have thus developed. Primitive mortals usually welcome the Planetary Prince and his visible staff; in fact, they often look upon them with awe and reverence, almost with worshipfulness, if they are not restrained.

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