First Friday of Advent:
Let there be
respect for the earth,
peace for its people,
Love in our lives,
delight in the good,
forgiveness for past wrongs,
and from now on
a new start.
The Millennium Resolution,
Churches Together in Britain & Ireland; a prayer of hope for
the Twenty-first century.
This Millennium Resolution Prayer, acceptable to people of all faiths or indeed none, was delivered (with a candle) to twenty million households in the UK. The candle was to be lit, and the prayer said, just before midnight on 31st December 1999, in the hope of good things to come in the next millennium.
With this came many hopes for the immediate future. The United Nations set out a Millennium Declaration, in which it stated
"We have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level. As leaders we have a duty therefore to all the world’s people, especially the most vulnerable and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future belongs."
We resolve
• To halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world’s people whose income is less than one dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and, by the same date, to halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water.
• To ensure that, by the same date, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling and that girls and boys will have equal access to all levels of education.
• By the same date, to have reduced maternal mortality by three quarters, and under-five child mortality by two thirds, of their current rates.
• To have, by then, halted, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/AIDS, the scourge of malaria and other major diseases that afflict humanity.
• To provide special assistance to children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.
• By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers as proposed in the "Cities Without Slums" initiative.
We also resolve:
• To promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable.
• To develop and implement strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work.
• To encourage the pharmaceutical industry to make essential drugs more widely available and affordable by all who need them in developing countries.
• To develop strong partnerships with the private sector and with civil society organizations in pursuit of development and poverty eradication.
We've got a long way to go!
We're very behind schedule.
With these noble resolutions in our prayers,
please pray today (and beyond today) the Millennium Prayer....
Let there be
respect for the earth,
peace for its people,
Love in our lives,
delight in the good,
forgiveness for past wrongs,
and from now on
a new start.
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