Creator of the mountains, the rivers, and the rolling hills,
You reached down to the dust and molded us in your image. You breathed your divine breath into us. You made us to be in relationship with one another and with you.
As our ancestors came of age, they told stories of walking side by side with you or of angelic visitors sent by you. Throughout our first sacred testament, the people — we — were faithful to you only to fall away. This pattern of back and forth of remembering to love and forgetting to love continues to this day. We do a good job of loving you and our neighbors only to turn our backs when it gets hard.
Still, your love and faithfulness to us — to your people of dust and divine breath — is steadfast. Thank you! Thank you! for your patience with us.
God of microbes and humanity, of puppies and alligators, creator of hope and purveyor of wisdom, in this time of fear and anxiety, of pandemic and polarization we turn to you.
We turn to you in this inexplicable time. God, we’ve never experienced a global pandemic before. We don’t know how to do this. It is so easy for us to be fearful and, yet, we know that is not the way you created us to be. You tell us time and again in our sacred text, “Do not be afraid.”
But it is hard. REALLY hard. Our anxiety threatens to separate us from one another. We forget our connectedness and hoard toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Help us to share that toilet paper. Help us to use this time of physical separation to reach out by telephone, or Facetime, email, or text to one another.
In the silence, perceive what is on our hearts. Hear the names of those about whom we worry and those who need your healing caress.
[silence]
Holy one, remind us, nudge us, move us in this time to see just how connected we are as a human family. Move us to be responsible and trust that you journey with us in this time of pandemic. Remind us that we are called in the midst of this time to choose love — of ourselves and of one another.
In the name of the Human One, we pray.
Amen.
Tim is a runner, a hiker, a devoted husband, a father of two adult children, and their spouses, and a grandfather of four perfect children. A former early childhood educator, Tim is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He has served as pastor of both Disciples and United Church of Christ congregations. As we enter what we hope is the final phase of the pandemic, Tim is beginning a journey of rediscovering himself and discerning next steps. He writes from his home in Albany, Oregon and wherever the Spirit lures him.
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