A daily prayer during this COVID-19 crisis for February 15, 2021

Feb. 15, 2021
A daily prayer during this COVID-19 crisis

During these difficult days, members of the New England Conference Board of Ordained Ministry are sharing a daily prayer based on the Revised Common Lectionary for the week. You are welcome to use these in worship or in your own devotions.

Today’s prayer

The touchless thermometer 
felt strange and weapon-like in my hand 
as the six-foot-distanced line approached: 
those hungry for breakfast, 
hungry to serve, 
hungry for a semblance of contact in our touchless world. 
The woman at the front thrust her masked face forward slightly, 
lifted a hand and brushed the strands of hair back, 
presenting me a bare, vulnerable forehead.
And I froze, uncertain 
if I was supposed to read her temperature 
or smear her with an ashen cross --
these reminders of our mortality, our fragility, 
of all that connects us in shared humanity 
and that drives us apart, 
rending the garment of community,
recoiling from the death 
we see written on one another’s faces 
in mask, 
in ash, 
in temperature reading --
a voice, whispering: 
 
Remember you are dust, and to dust you return. 
 
Remember you are breath and aerosol, 
dirt and germ, 
flesh and tears and sweat, 
blood and bone. 
Remember you are human, 
and prone to illness, 
to sorrow, to loss, 
and to death. 
Remember you are human, 
and fragile, and mortal, 
and all the more precious 
to Me.
 
--
 
God of breath and aerosol, of immune cell and virus and vaccine, of death and of life: remind us as we face our mortality how very much we need you, and one another. Remind us that we are dust, grains of sand slipping between your fingers, caught again and again in your palms. Remind us that in our fragile life and death, we are yet precious to you. 
 
By Rev. Becca Girrell, United Community Church of Morrisville, VT ​