“The pandemic has taken a lot from us.” This phrase uttered by a godly woman in our faith family expressing her own heart could have been voiced by many of us. There is much that we have lost in this time: security, certainty, ability to avoid brokenness and injustice, personal interaction, hugs and handshakes, and the like. In the midst of transforming unrest, we join our faith family member in expressing our hearts as well, through these words adapted from Ernest Campbell.
Father, there are times when all that keeps our faith afloat is a sense of gratitude toward you. The headlines of the day beat us down, evil within us and about us lays us open to paralyzing doubt, and conviction leaves us confused. Then we recall your gifts of nature and of grace, and in that recalling, we find the power to go on, to go with you into tomorrow.
We thank you for reason and affection; for our unity with everything that lives and breathes; for poetry that utters what the heart holds; for laments that make our problems your problems; for friendships of long-standing that multiply our joys and temper our disappointments; and for new relationships that open up possibilities of what could be.
We thank you most that we live in dialogue with you; that we have proved prayer real and have known the strength of supporting love in our seasons of apparent defeat.
It is good that human beings should praise your name, and we gladly do it now, together.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.