Jim Wallace at Sojourner’s magazine has written some helpful
reflections on the Lord’s Prayer, seen through the lens of the current Covid-19
pandemic. You can find it here.
Interspersed throughout the article are these additional prayers,
inspired by the various sections of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples
(Matthew 6:5-15, Luke 11:1-13).
Praying during a Pandemic
(inspired by the prayer Jesus taught
his disciples
as recorded in Matthew 6:5-15, Luke
11:1-13)
O Lord, we confess our sadness and our fears. We feel stuck,
trapped inside, overwhelmed, helpless, and even hopeless. Help us to believe
that our present does not control our future, that we can look forward and not
just backward. Enable us to change our situation now by bringing the future
into it. Only the radical values of your new order — of love and justice — will
bring your kingdom into our community right now, lived in this and all moments.
Inspire and sustain us to bring your kingdom to earth even right now — in this
moment of crisis.
Lord, in this moment we pray especially for those fighting on the
front lines of the pandemic — our first responders, nurses, doctors, and other
health care professionals — to save as many lives as they can. Shelter them
from this virus and grant your healing mercies to those who will inevitably get
sick despite their best efforts to protect themselves. Help our government and
society mobilize to provide the protective and medical equipment they need to
keep up as best they can with the onslaught of patients that is already here or
on its way. And help those of us not in the health care sector to do the most
important thing we can to protect them and lessen the severity of the strain
they face — help us to stay home.
O Lord, we are all ultimately afraid of hunger, and that fear
grows during a time of modern plague when we see even more people going without
their daily bread and suffering from food insecurity. Give us the strength not
to hoard, but the courage to share what we have in order to provide daily bread
for all. There is always enough for all if we find the creative personal,
communal, and political ways to share it together. Lord, we know that we find
you and each other at the table, so please make us hungry for larger tables.
Even in times of social distance, show us how our daily bread can bring us
together.
O Lord, we owe you everything. You have forgiven our sins and
trespasses, and for that, we are indebted to you. You have asked us to forgive
others for their sins and trespasses, and perhaps their debts, too. Help us all
to ask what a prayer for debtors would mean in this health and economic crisis.
Where can we forgive the debts of others when we have the opportunity to do so?
Oh God, how do we treat others they way you have treated us? Lord, you have
never exercised foreclosure on our sins, trespasses, and debts. How can we
follow your lead in our relationships with others, with our neighbors during a
pandemic? Lord have mercy, Lord teach us to have mercy — right now.
Dear Lord, forgive us for the temptation to retreat from our
neighbors in this health crisis, taking social distance into social withdrawal
from the most vulnerable. Forgive those who feel exempt from this disease and
therefore exempt from any responsibility for those who get sick. Forgive our
president, and other people of wealth and power, who value economic activity
over public health, and who are willing to sacrifice the worth of other human
lives for their own political and economic gain.
Lord, give us the faith and the courage to make this proclamation
even in a time of a deadly virus. Give us the “patience in tribulation” that
the Apostle Paul calls us to.
Because we know what your kingdom on earth brings, give us the
hope of that kingdom in our hearts, lives, communities, and the nations. Let
that future we believe in help sustain us in the present, even when things we
can’t control seem to dominate our lives. Lord, help us to believe that the
virus, the threats, the injustices, and the fears they create are NOT in
control and never will be, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory, now and forever. Amen.
~ written by Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners. Posted on the Sojourners
website. https://sojo.net/articles/lords-prayer-pandemic
