On Sat. August 6 we commemorate the bombing of Hiroshima. Please use this prayer to remember the victims and to end all forms of weapons of mass destruction. 

A time for remembrance and challenge. At 8:15 in the morning of August 6, 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped from a USA B-29 bomber on Hiroshima, Japan. More than seventy thousand people died instantly or within hours. Few were soldiers. …

Leader: Let us join in prayer on this day of remembrance for Hiroshima, to recall the past, to be challenged in the present and to seek hope for the future.

People: O God of power, gracious in love, you have given humankind responsibility to care for all the earth. But we have put our faith in military power, while you call us to build a community of trust and love.

Leader: By our actions and by our inaction, and by our participation in the systems of society we often become agents of violence and destruction.

People: O God of us all, let Hiroshima become for us a symbol of hope that nuclear weapons will never again be used to kill and destroy.

Leader: Let us remember Hiroshima as a beacon to commit ourselves to find ways to live together in peace, that we may not be just peace lovers, but peacemakers.

People: O God of infinite possibility, transform our hearts and minds and give us courage to use our skills and technology to transform weapons that destroy into all that upholds life.

Leader: Isaiah said: “It shall come to pass that the peoples shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

All: We pray for the time when “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Source: Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice. Prayer by Susan Adams, a missionary in Japan for 13 years, now serves as a volunteer at Asian Rural Institute in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan.