Our family is taking time daily to pray about the current global health crisis. Our prayers will likely reference the Christian tradition, but we’ve written with an ecumenical and agnostic audience in mind.
If you’d like us to pray for you, let us know. If you’d like us to write a prayer for you or for a concern you have and share it here, just ask. You don’t have to share your name if you don’t want to, and we won’t share it or any other identifying details about you here or elsewhere.
Today, we are focusing our prayer on people who are unable to gather now for corporate worship, prayer, teaching, or reflection.
Today we remember those who live long for their church, mosque, synagogue, temple, gurdwara, or other place of worship. We pray for those for whom physically gathering together is especially important for their mental and spiritual health and who miss the familiar and comforting surroundings of their house of worship. We pray for all those who for whom entering into a sacred space brings comfort and strength.
We pray for those we don’t know, and we pray for those we do know, including [insert the names of friends, family, neighbors, and others we know miss their house of worship, including ourselves]. We pray for all those who work in and maintain these facilities and the many people who continue to make religious worship, prayer, teaching, and ritual accessible to people despite our inability to gather together. We are thankful for their creativity and commitment to serving the needs of their congregants.
We pray for those whose hearts are heavy, especially those who fear they may not be able to return to their house of worship. Our hope for them is that they will be comforted. We pray that they can rely on joyful memories of times when they gathered corporately. We pray that those who feel disconnected are assured that they are not forgotten by others in their congregations.
We are grateful for the places where people share community and pray that all those who need such community find it now, even if they are not able to physically gather.
Above, the interior of the dome of St. Matthew the Evangelist in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Though our family is not Orthodox, we celebrated with our friends when we lived in this area as their dream of a Greek Orthodox church came into fruition. As is traditional, Christ the Almighty (Pantokrator, “Ruler of All”) watches over the congregation. You can see more icons from this church as well as read about the effort to build it here.
Family Foxhole 