Pandemicking, A Prayer

God,

I’m thinking about how we are all here

pandemicking,

all day everyday.

Even though we long for the day

that we have pandemicked,

we are just not there yet.

Just as you are the God

who is Justicing, Gooding, Blessinginging

(because the gerund* verb tense is the best)

the timeframe of this pandemicking

is equally ongoing, and nebulous,

and I am aware that the echoes of this

Pandemicking, will actually live on in me

forever.

In truth I will never stop Pandemicking.

Like those who were Immigrating,

never will, in some sense stop being immigrants,

and those who have survived something,

never will, in some sense, stop being survivors.

And today

I’m thankful that you, Jesus

–who fled to Egypt, lived under occupation,

grew up an outsider and were almost thrown off a cliff,

You Jesus of all people,

get that.

And some days I’m bitter that

in some ways

I’ll always be pandemicking

and on somedays, I wonder, but do I really want to unlearn

all the things I needed to know?

About the cracks in society?

About those who we have lost!

About who are being forgotten?

About what needs to change?

After all, what is greater discipleship than that?

So, God. I’ll be here. Surviving this pandemic.

Pandemicking.

Every single day.

And thankful that I have the gerund tense to describe it.

But I’m also grateful that I have a God

Who gets it–

and gives us a knapsack of the right kind of more gerunds,

to do this pandemic thing,

and for being a pandemicking God along the way.

Here Goes God, more Pandemicking….

Come with me…

Amen.

Pandemic Prayers & Resources

Feel free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta and please give to my 2nd year of Doctorate of Ministry in Creative Writing at https://gofund.me/aaeb4910

*Gerund: is a verb that we have turned into a noun with ing like swimming. In ancient Hebrew gerund was a tense that can also mean present participle, it means ongoing without a definite end, when it comes to God I think of it as the inging verbs.

Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

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