A daily prayer during this COVID-19 crisis for November 7, 2020

Nov. 7, 2020

A daily prayer during this COVID-19 crisis

During these difficult days, Boston University School of Theology is 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

Prayer based on Matthew 15:21-28 We thank you, God, for the hope and faith that nurtures us at these complex and uncertain times.  As we face two identifiable pandemics in the context of the US, Covid 19 and Racism, we ask that your spirit of courage finds us at the crossroads.  As we encounter the dangers of the intersections, we ask for your guidance and wisdom to help us not be afraid and to accompany others in the processes of survival as we all seek new life and new ways of being in your grace and love. We ask, at these times of ambiguity, that you help us identify the endurance, courage and wisdom of the Canaanite woman who makes herself visible and finds a place and space to be included in the mission and ministry of Jesus and the disciples. She finds the courage to ask more of Jesus and the vision to see the power of life and possibilities of new life for a better future.  In her insistence and encounter with the disciples and Jesus at the marketplace/in the public plaza she appropriates life for her daughter and vision of a future for all foreigners and marginalized, for all who are made invisible and are excluded. We pray today for the understanding that we need to be of great courage, and with great wisdom, to continue claiming and reclaiming our own spaces and ministries in the manner of the Canaanite women in Matthew.  We are in need of something that is built on the encounters of great consequence in the marketplace, something that interrupts and makes new spaces and places in public spaces where the excluded and invisible become included and visible and find their place at the table of creation. Help us to accept the challenge to engage in encounters of great consequence today, encounters that bring about justice.  Help me, as a person, to know that I am not I, without encountering you, and that I am not I complete, without encountering God. 

Help us collectively to know that we are not we, without encountering each other and God. AMEN. Rev. Dr. Cristian De La Rosa, Director of Contextual Theology and Community Partnerships, Assistant Professor of Contextual Theology and Practice, Boston University School of Theology, UMC elder