I'm a pastor. This was my pastoral prayer in our service yesterday:
Father God,
This morning we take great comfort in the fact that you know when we sit down and when we rise up; you discern our thoughts from afar. You search out our paths and our lying down and are acquainted with all our ways. We are strengthened in the knowledge that we can never flee from your presence.
We take comfort in your word and seeing how you have cared for your people in the past. When Israel prepared to cross over the Jordan into the promised land, you led them so that they would know the way they should go, for you knew they had never been this way before.
Oh, Lord. With the situation we find ourselves in in the world today, we confess to you that we have never been this way before and we desperately need your help.
The threat we face is not sitting in the gulf able to be tracked and plotted and projected where it may strike, with thousands of volunteers at the ready to respond at a moment's notice when the wind and the waves subside.
The threat we face is not kept out with locks on our vehicles or homes able to be defended by keeping watch through the night.
Rather, we face a virus, an invisible threat that sneaks up and attacks without our knowledge, only knowing after the fact what has hit us.
We don't know what's good for us. We don't know what's prudent and what's unnecessary. We want to be faithful and not fearful; yet we want to be wise and not foolhardy. We know that you are our refuge and hope, and we want to live trusting, confident lives in you; yet we also don't want to throw ourselves off the heights of the temple putting you to the test.
Please protect us. Please take this virus and cast it away from us the way you have casted our sin away from us as far as east is from west.
Even in the first days of this pandemic, we realize how we have taken you and your protection and power for granted. Please forgive us for forgetting the physical as well as spiritual refuge you are. As we go about our days, we ask that you remind us often of your strong hand that has graciously kept countless things away from us and sustained us through innumerable visible and invisible threats and trials.
May we be a blessing to our neighbors in every way: in our responsibility, in our joy, in our abiding trust in our Lord, may you keep us from crass remarks and sarcasm, may we not be fearful, but confident in you and in your grace and the hope of eternity you have provided for us in Christ.
Please give us wisdom if we should continue to meet. We thank you for the gift of Christian fellowship, may we not squander the moments we have together and not take them for granted but make them count for your glory in whatever form they may take.
We shudder to think of the economic impact of coronavirus on our own bank accounts, on our city, county, state, country, and world. It is all so overwhelming. But we acknowledge that all we have comes from you. We have nothing that we have not received from you. So as the eyes of the servants look to the hand of their master, our eyes look to you, the Lord our God. We ask that you give us our daily bread and help us to cast our cares upon you.
We ask for your wisdom and prudence for all of those you have placed in authority over us at every level of government. We thank you for them and ask that you would keep them from using these opportunities to manipulate things for their party or their power. We pray that you give them a sense of humility and boldness to do what you lead them to do in big and in little things.
Give us also a humility to submit to those in authority who must give an account to you for us, may they be able to lead us with joy and not with grief. For that is not profitable for us.
In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
