May 12, 2020
A daily prayer during this COVID-19 crisis
During these difficult days, Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar and the members of the Extended Cabinet 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
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them." ~ John 14:15-21 (NRSV) "Growing up in India, I saw orphaned children daily. I saw first hand the sadness, the longing, and the experience of abandonment.That vivd childhood memory comes back to me when I read the promise, 'I will not leave you orphaned.'" — Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar. Merciful God, We stand in the midst of sickness, death, and grief; we see people without jobs, standing in mile-long food lines; we witness the unjust distribution of resources and racial discrimination, we watch health care providers exhausted and overwhelmed farmers with no market for their crops we wonder ... have they, have we, been abandoned? Jesus promised ... that we would not be orphaned* that you would send your Spirit that, because he lives, we shall live that you are not gone from us that we have not been deserted that you abide with us, and in us. O God our Help, hear our prayer — to love you to keep your great commandment to love others to know you revealed through our loving acts to see you — here and now with us and in us, forever. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.