Day 115: A Week of Prayer for Our Nation in Crisis - For Those in the Armed Forces of Our Country

DAY 115

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

Week Seventeen – Tuesday 7 July 2020

A WEEK OF PRAYER FOR OUR NATION IN CRISIS

For Those in the Armed Forces of Our Country

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. - The Book of Common Prayer: Prayers for National Life

“In many ways, the religious affairs team attempts to encounter this new level of anxiety in which basic and previously held assumptions are challenged due to the sudden shift in conditions. The new normal shows that resilience and perseverance have become sacrosanct.” - A military chaplain on the pandemic from a Department of Defense web site

Out of sight and out of mind – our nation’s military are still staying the course in the midst of the triple sources of stress that affect us all: the pandemic, the economic downturn, and political and social chaos. It would be unrealistic to think they are not also being affected by it all, and the mental health issues rising in the general population are also rising within the military. “A new level of anxiety” according to the military chaplain quoted above, requires commitment to “resilience and perseverance,” qualities we pray for, for them and for ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address on March 4^th 1865, in addition to addressing veterans, their widows and orphans, is a clarion call to us today in our deeply divided nation: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”       

Reflective question: Do you know someone in active duty military? Let them know you are praying for them.

Reflective Scripture: 2 Timothy 2:4 – “No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.”

Reflective hymn:

“Eternal Father, Strong to Save” – William Whiting (1825-1878)

O Trinity of love and power, our brethren shield from danger’s hour;

From rock and tempest, fire and foe, protect them whereso’er they go,

Thus evermore shall rise to Thee glad praise from air and land and sea.