The sense of wonder and expectation has been slowly growing in my gut as the weeks have passed. Maybe we’ll all look back at this time and begin to describe stages of grief in a global pandemic: from disbelief to shock to anger to action. Or, at least that’s been my privileged path to walk along — where I just now feel the urgency to action.
I don’t mean action in the sense of “social distancing” — I have been doing that as best as I can for these weeks.
The disorientation and shock is wearing off and it’s being replaced instead by something like awe. My limited understanding of the reality that the entire world has ground to a halt now sobers me to ask, to listen, to cry out to God in prayer.
What are you up to, God? I lay in bed wondering before going to sleep. What do you want your Church doing in the midst of this?
Oh God, let us hear your call in this. And let us respond in faith.
Tonight I joined in an online program called Be Still with around 10,000 other people from all over the world. It was a calling to prayer in the midst of crisis. A 40-day prayer chain is beginning to cry out for his mercy and healing in the world.
I have to be honest: I have not been filling the space in my days with the things I’ve been sensing I ought: reading the Bible, praying and journaling, worshipping in song. I’m drawn to my phone like a moth to it’s light —the way it fills the silence and the space so I don’t have to think or feel too much.
Lord, have mercy. Help me pray. Help me be. Help me be still and silent. Empower me to think and feel deeply.
I signed up to get a text to remember to pray. But tomorrow is Good Friday and that strikes me as a great impetus to start being still, knowing He is God and He will be exalted in all the world.
hope for the sojourn 