DAY 180: A Thou Who Hears!

DAY 180

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

pastorrobert@paxpres.org

Week Twenty-six    Thursday 10 September 2020

 A Thou Who Hears!

We prefer our worship of you should be upbeat.

So like it that the church is “the happiest place in town.”

We take our glimpse of your promised kingdom as a venue,

where never is heard a discouraging word!

But then….reality !!

like suffering and death,

like pandemic and virus,

like loss unimaginable!

That reality breaks our happy illusion of a fairy-tale life in the first world,

and we are left with stone-cold fear and

bottomless need.

So we cry out with urgent imperative:

Help, help, save!
We cry out with the whole company of the people of faith who have cried out.

We cry out, because our cry, since the lips of the slaves of Egypt,

is our most elemental word back to you, our creator.

We cry out, not in despair, but in confidence that you hear.

You are the one, the only one, who can turn our sorrow to joy,

mourning to dancing, weeping to laughter.

So now, God who hears, helps and saves,

hear, act, and make new!

Give us courage and patience;

end the virus;

let us be rich in soul and poor in things,

ordered for neighborliness, generous with goods,

free of fear,

but mostly: end the virus!

We pray this in the name of Jesus who defeated the powers of death,

overcame the forces of evil,

ended the unbearable vexation of leprosy for some, and

became the Lord of the Dance, the dance of wellbeing, gladness, and peace.

So we pray, so we trust, so we hope … in you! Amen.

Walter Brueggemann, Professor of Old Testament Emeritus,

Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

Virus as a Summons to Faith, © 2020, Cascade Books