But where to start?!  It’s quite a task to take on ‘praying for the world’ ~ so on Saturday night at the St. James’ Church Youth Group in Taichung, we started with, well, where else to start, but, of course, Taiwan!  And we prayed around the Tropic of Cancer for all 16 officially-listed countries, one of which is Taiwan.  Interestingly, many of those countries are very arid and dry ~ the Tropic of Cancer actually passes right through the middle of the Sahara Desert.  And the highest mountain on the Tropic of Cancer is …… (drum roll here)… Yushan in Taiwan!

Anyway, each person took a paper out of a box, with the name of one of those 16 countries on it.  We re-ordered the circle so everyone was sitting in order of their country’s location on the Tropic of Cancer.  Then we spent a very quiet 15 minutes absorbed in our cellphones finding out info to share about that country and using that info to write our own prayer ~ and so we prayed around the circle, each country lit by a candle…  I had the Bahamas, and y’know it’s quite some country, and I knew nowt much about it beforehand!

Partly inspired by the Chiayi Lantern Festival, which also takes the Tropic of Cancer as a theme with all the 16 countries listed and their locations…. and partly related to today’s Gospel reading which includes John 3:16: “For God so loved THE WORLD that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  Hey, that’s good news for us and for the whole world!

So pray on, and pray for the world!