People across countries and continents watched last week as the United States inaugurated a new president. We welcomed our first Black, South Asian, female vice-president, witnessed a stunning poem by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, and beheld the strange sites of a socially-distanced ceremony surrounded by military enforcement. We Americans, for better or worse, are somewhat used to the idea that the world has its eyes on us.

Amidst this strange reality, the Holy Spirit calls American Christians to look outward even as we are looked upon—remembering our brothers and sisters in foreign countries.

In “Prayers and Praises from the World’s Hardest Places to Be a Christian,” Morgan Lee, CT's global media manager and the co-host of Quick to Listen, shares the prayer requests of Christians in 11 nations on Open Doors’ Christian persecution watchlist. May the Holy Spirit compel us to pray for our beloved the world over, even as well as we care for the wellbeing of our kindred here at home.