During these challenging and stressful days, we’re invited to pause in prayer and reflection for ourselves, our community, our city, country and our world. Each day you will be sent an invitation to visit this page to read a prayer, read a story, good news, signs of hope, art, music … all to gather our energy and send it out to a fearful and hurting world.

Today, we’re invited to pray a Lynn Unger’s poem:

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

Obtained from: https://www.ccvichapel.org/post/lynn-unger-3-11-2020-pandemic