Common Prayer of the North and South for Peace and Unification

by Global Ministries | published on Oct 10, 2014

This Common Prayer is written jointly every year by the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK) and the Korean Christian Federation (KCF). We ask that this prayer be lifted in churches around the world together with Korean Christians on the Sunday closest to August 15, the anniversary of the liberation of Korea from Japan in 1945, followed so tragically by the division of the peninsula.

Common Prayer of the North and South for Peace and Unification

God of righteousness and peace,

We thank you for having listened to our nation’s mourning in pain under the Japanese occupation, and for opening the door of unification and peace on the Korean peninsula 62 years ago.

We thank you for calling the churches in the North and the South to be disciples of Christ and to gather together to pray in one voice for peace and unification on this Liberation Memorial Day.

God of love and unification,

We pray that you lead us to do our best to create a new history of unification beyond division, and lead our people to help each other to move beyond the suffering of war and to achieve common prosperity.

We pray that you give us a new sign of reconciliation and cooperation on the Korean peninsula to which you call us, which will contribute to peace in North-East Asia and all the world.

God who gives us strength and wisdom,

You showed us that peace is to be achieved through humiliation and service just as Jesus came to us in a humble manger, in communion with sinners and washing the feet of the disciples.

You taught us, through your death on the cross offering a sacrifice for atonement, that unification and unity is to be fulfilled through self-sacrifice.

We will follow your teachings through our oneness in prayer as churches in the North and the South.

We will do our utmost to be a church proclaiming national unification and peace as well as practicing it with mildness and humility, not with threats, with justice and love, not with force, with patience and devotion, not with oppression.

God, we pray that you fill us with strength and wisdom.

Believing that you call us to be workers for our nation’s unification and peace, that you call us to work today and continuously, and that you guide us to open a new history of our nation’s unification and peace, we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

This Common Prayer was jointly written by the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK) and the Korean Christian Federation (KCF).