Pandemic Prayer – Page 3

Healing Touch

Lord,

We hunger for your healing touch. We want to rush out to you, heedless of noise & crowd to touch even the fringe of your cloak, so that we too might be healed. In a time when so many of us are begging at the gate. So many of us our dealing with illness. In a time where the disabilities that can follow coronavirus can be as frightening as the illness itself. Lord we hunger for healing.

We also long for touch. How long has it been, Lord, since I’ve hugged a friend or shared a handshake or passed out communion? I don’t think I’d know what hunger I have for human touch, until the restrictions to pause and stay safe came into play.

I suspect the next thing I will miss are the smiles that the masks hide.

Smiles, prayers, touch how little does it take to make church happen Lord? How much it takes to make church happen!

Thank God for the healers: the doctors, the nurses, the medical staff, and the researchers. Thank God for cleansers: the custodians and cleaning crews and trash collectors. Thank God for the providers: the retail & grocery workers, the restaurant workers & gas attendants. Thank God for the repairers: the mechanics, the plumbers, electricians, energy and water providers. We know that all of these people are part of the healing touch.

Help us to remember that we are not Jesus, healing is not instantaneous, that touching and prayer and smiles might appear in different ways but they are still essential to how we are going to survive and heal. Remind us today and every day we pray.

Eastertide Resources

Pandemic Resources

Grief

Dearest God,

Who loved us into being. I have the sad today. It is lingering on all the things I touch. As I wake my kids up, I miss putting them on the schoolbus and the few moments breath between home and work as I travel in.

I miss stopping for tea-coffee for some- as a pick me up.

I miss seeing my friends.

I miss alone time, truly alone, with no one in the house.

I also miss hugging others. How can I miss both at the same time? Only you know Lord.

I miss funerals.

I miss all the kids I’ll see grow: at church, nursery school, elementary school, at the college, and ALL the babies at playgroup!

Jesus who missed sitting by Lazarus when he died, who wept openly when his mother had to leave him to die alone.

I miss not having to wear an itchy mask that fogs up my glasses every time I go out.

I miss touching my face.

I miss not worrying if every small business, theater and church is going to be open next year.

I miss the therapies for my kids. I miss anyone taking over for the kids for an hour or two, I miss babysitting.

I miss talking on the phone for fun. I miss real meetings (Who thought I’d say that?)

I miss sitting in church, and singing and praying together.

I miss my sister coming out for Easter. She already missed last year, to miss two in a year feels a cruel trick.

Jesus what did you miss those three days in the tomb? The friends, the family, the touch. Did you miss the purposeful meaning-making of work? Did you miss your favorite food? Did you miss the beautiful lakes you frequented? Did you have a plan you had to cancel the morning of the last supper, when you realized the arrest was coming that very day? Did you miss a child’s first step or word? A niece or a nephew you had been waiting on?

I wonder if Jesus misses the very crowds that annoyed him now that he has ascended into heaven?

Grief is the slow journey of realization: That my middle child will never go back to elementary school he will suddenly move to fifth grader, my eldest will never be Peter Pan in Shrek, that my youngest will never get to see his brand new friends–who he just made this year–in school until after summer.

I’m grieving the small overnight trips I was going to make: for business and to see friends, I love traveling.

I’m grieving all the misses and the can’ts: the events, the peoples, the milestones, the simple moments.

I’m grieving not being able to go to the library and pick out a free book, pick up an art supply or even my favorite pasta from the grocery store (shell noodles).

It’s all, every single bit of it, real.

There is no piece of grief too small for Christ. Each one appears in my path, threatening to derail my journey–whether it’s a mountain in the way or a pebble in my shoe.

Lord, help me journey through my crumbs and mountains of grief I pray.

I lift my eyes to the hills of my grief, from whom shall my help come?

My help comes from the Lord, my God.

Help me I pray.

Amen.

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Can You Hear Easter (the good news)

Can you hear Easter?

It’s ringing in the stilled bells, the empty chapels, creeping up with the quiet growth of spring

It’s on the lips of exhausted doctors and nurses—too tired to murmur

It’s in the silent wave between neighbors, keeping too far away to talk, but close enough for company

It’s in the silent hug between family members stuck together; where entire conversations flow through the body

It’s on the breath of the sick, in that place between waking and sleeping

It’s in the angel’s nod of greeting to the women, the absence of guards and the rolling away of the stone

If s a stone rolls away and nobody hears it; does it make a sound?

It booms like the rise thunderous sun, bedecked in glory, shining out the news wordless in its proclamation

Can you hear Easter?

Thank God it’s Friday? Psalm 22

My God, My God why have you abandoned us?

The churches are empty, The offices, the schools, the streets are laid bare.

and demons are everywhere.

The diseases hide in plain sight, and surround us.

And we are stuck, alone, in our own personal pit left with only with our anxieties and depressions.

The powers that be are useless, stuck running around in circles, contradictions abound.

We are stuck in the mire. Things suck, and for those who have to watch their beloved ones die alone this is the shitstorm that never ends.

And God, you know I do not say shitstorm lightly.

We are stuck in the pit. Are very bodies are disturbed. I feel like not eating, then eating everything. I cannot sleep, but neither can I stay awake.

My God, My God. Why would you send your only son on earth to suffer with us.

To see those who are falling through the cracks: the maligned: Zacchaeus, the ignored: the woman by the well, the ones with long term diseases: the lepers and those living with disabilities: the lame and the blind.

Then to see friends die of disease. First Jairus’ daughter, then his beloved friend Lazarus.

Thank God it’s Friday, Good Friday. A day to cry out, a day to admit that not everything is alright. The kids are not alright, neither are their parents or grandparents. The doctors and nurses are not alright, nor the grocery and retail and mail workers. The teachers are not alright, nor the aunties or the uncles. Those who live with abusers, those who are not yet out to their family aren’t alright, those who are lonely and have no one to call are not alright. The thousands and thousands of people on unemployment are not alright.

Lord, why have you abandoned us? We are not alright. If it’s possible, please let this cup pass.

But your will be done.

We are not alright, and Jesus is not alright with us.

We are vulnerable, he made himself vulnerable. We are cold, sick, naked, alone, uncertain and unsafe.

We are face to face with the cross and we do not like it.

Lord hear our prayer! Be with those who are not alright, be with us for we are not alright. Help us. Hosanna in the highest.

Amen.

More Pandemic Prayers & Resources

Broken for you: Maundy Thursday Prayer

Heavenly God

I know the story. After they had supped with one another—Jesus took bread & blessed it & broke it. He did so saying this is my body broken for you.

And when the Coronavirus was coming—we went to the grocery stores and the stores that sold toilet paper. And we called our far way family, our everyday colleagues and our close friends and sent heartfelt blessings to one another, and then we said to each each other I will broken for you.

And then, Lord, as Jesus washed the feet of the disciples he told them to love one another—passing on the gift that Mary Magdalene gave him, he knelt in front of each and every one of them to cleanse the dirt off their feet.

We too are washing in service–washing the germs from our hands when we enter a building, washing the germs for ourselves when we exit. Let each washing be a blessings. A spillover of your love. A symbol of the cup spilling over and filling our souls. Washing people from our presence, standing at least six feet from one another out of love. Bless this washing we pray.

Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Good Friday: Denial and Grace in Crises

Before this night is over Peter, you will deny me three times,

In fact each and every one of you will deny me before the end.

Not me Lord, I would never deny you.

The absolute horror of what was going to happen could not be fathomed by the disciples. It was too a deep a hole for them to see. Death, betrayal, denial and damnation were unthinkable. After all they had faith, and they had Jesus. What else would they need?

Denial is very human. It’s how we handle some of the world, it’s one way to fend off PTSD.

What are you in denial about right now? Here, in the middle of a pandemic, what is too much for you to take in?

Remember that even the disciples had trouble processing it all. Remember that only Christ and God can hold the enormity of the tragedy that is taking place. And Jesus requested the presence of these fumbling disciples in Gethsemane to pray. And after they messed up not once, not twice, but three times, but Jesus did not send them away.

We will not be sent away, and our presence is necessary.

Give yourself the grace you need to pray, be in denial and present in whatever strange combination exists within your soul, and remember you do in good company.

More Pandemic Prayers and Resources

Holy Saturday: A confession

Dear God,

I confess that when I said I didn’t have enough time, I didn’t mean it. When I said I didn’t want to work, or that I wanted to be alone, or even that I wanted more time with my family. In fact, I don’t think this was what I meant at all. I didn’t know what I was praying for when I wished for a staycation.

What I realize I meant was that I have trouble prioritizing. What I realize now is that I really don’t know who or what is essential. What I meant was, I was burnt out and caring for all the things I needed to care about (or all of the things I thought I needed to care about) was very, very hard. I confess now that I have this gift of time, I don’t know what to do with it. Help me to be ok with that I pray.

Amen

More Pandemic Prayer Resources