Spiritual & Personal Support
during Covid -19:
Reflections &
Devotions
Daily Inspiration from the National Council of Churches
During this time, while the whole world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Council of Churches (NCC) is posting Daily Bible Readings plus a meditation to help guide our prayers.
Find them here - you can also subscribe to receive them by email every day.
Following are some special entries in this series.
In These Uncertainties
By Rosemarie Wenner, Germany
Retired Bishop of The United Methodist Church; Geneva Secretary of the World Methodist Council; former President of the UMC Council of Bishops
Today my calendar reminds me of a flight from Geneva to Frankfurt. I am not in Geneva though. Like many other people, I stay at home; home for me is in South Germany. The coronavirus thwarted my plans. Yet I am healthy while many people are sick – some to death – and I live in a country with good health care systems, under threat in the moment, but more reliable than in most other countries. I think of colleagues and friends around the globe and those for whom they care. COVID-19 is almost anywhere. We all live in an exceptional status with lots of ambiguities.
Here are some examples:
Many people care for others in extraordinary ways. Physicians and nurses work almost day and night; congregations organize services for neighbors in need. And yet: some co-citizens don’t respect restrictions and put danger on themselves and others.
The German government acts timely and reasonable. Yet, like all other governments, it focuses almost exclusively on the protection of German citizens; humanitarian resettlement programs for refugees are suspended and there is no attention to those in refugee camps in Greece and elsewhere.
We praise the many blessings of digital means to stay connected and do business and even church. At the same time, the protection of personal data is under threat with wide-ranging risks for basic human rights.
In these and many other uncertainties and ambiguities I pray:
Merciful God, you are at work in your world, created out of chaos daily anew.
We come to you with our fear and despair as well as with our hopes and our creative actions.
Comfort us, strengthen us, guide us on our journey through the unknown.
Fill our hearts with compassion for those who are excluded from circles of care.
Sharpen our minds to analyze harmful conditions and guide us towards righteousness.
Christ Jesus – fill us with your unconditional love.
Holy Spirit – give us long breathing and surround us with peace – beyond our understanding.
Amen.
How will we balance love and fear?
By Rev. Dave Brown, a member of the PCUSA
Education Roundtable (Presbyterian Church USA)
It was 1966 when, after taking the bus from New Jersey to the Port Authority bus terminal and the 1-train downtown, I found myself at the Café Au Go Go, the legendary subterranean club on Bleeker Street. The YOUNGBLOODS was the band on stage that night and I clearly remember one song from that set. The song was “Get Together”.
It would appear on the band’s first album that would be released early in 1967. It would be re-released as a single in 1969, becoming a hit and an anthem that still echoes today. Chet Powers wrote the song with the memorable chorus, “Come on People, now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now.” The chorus became an anthem and lots of people knew it then and now. But that night at the Café Au Go Go, it was the opening line that caught my attention:
“Love is but a song to sing, fears the way we die.”
That line holds my attention today.
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PRAYERS FOR PEACE (P4P)
CMEP: Churches for Middle East Peace
Prayers for Peace (P4P) provides a way for Christians of diverse political and theological backgrounds to stand up for peace and unite in supplication to God with a special focus on prayers for the Holy Land.
Prayers for Peace provides Jesus’ followers with the common language of prayer around which to mobilize their energy and passion for the land that gave birth to our faith. See these devotionals here
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