Prayer As We Face The Grim Realities of This Pandemic Calamity

So  here are the statistics at the time I was preparing this blog video.  They will be worse by the time you are seeing it.

There’s a word I haven’t heard much in recent times but I certainly heard it in younger years -  CALAMITY.

CALAMITY: 1: a disastrous event marked by great loss and lasting distress and suffering calamities of nature an economic calamity. 2 : a state of deep distress or misery caused by major misfortune or loss.

Some synomyns of calamity that are more familiar words to many of us are: disaster, catastrophe, tragedy, cataclysm, devastating blow, crisis, adversity, affliction.

Well, I can’t think of a clearer description of this pandemic and it’s effects on all of us than to call it a calamity.  Where is God in the middle of all of this?  Listen to these comforting words:

He reached down from heaven and rescued me; he drew me out of deep waters.  He rescued me from my powerful enemies, from those who hated me and were too strong for me. They attacked me at a moment when I was in distress, but the Lord supported me. He led me to a place of safety; he rescued me because he delights in me.  Psalm 18:16-19

Well Lord, if ever there was a time when we needed You to reach down from heaven and rescue us and draw us out of deep waters, now would be the time.  Rescue us from all these enemies – virus, virus variants, long covid difficulties, financial pressures, marital pressures, job insecurities, attacks on basic provision of food and shelter.  Lord, we don’t understand everything that is going on in the unseen world but what we know is that there are forces of evil that hate us and are too strong for us.  They attack us when we are in distress but Your promise and Your reality is that You support us.  You lead us to places of safety and You rescue us because You delight in us. 

Therefore the Lord has kept the calamity in store and brought it on us; for the Lord our God is righteous with respect to all His deeds which He has done, but we have not obeyed His voice.  Daniel 9:14

We also know that in history some calamities came as a result of the sin of people over time and their rebellion, their refusal to hear Your voice and walk in Your ways.  Once again, we don’t have the big picture and so we don’t know how much of what is going on is this kind of direct result of the evil one getting at us because we walked away as a nation and a society from Your hand of protection.  We do pray that leaders and peoples will be so much more about turning to You to listen to You so we can find relief rather than turning on one another with attack and blame. 

Listen to this amazing invitation and promise from the God who created us if we will just turn to Him, heed His voice, and walk in His ways:

Listen to the Lord who created you. O Israel, the one who formed you says, “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine.  When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.  Isaiah 43:1-3

So Lord, in these troubling times we are so grateful that You are with us and You are holding on to us.  You are our saviour. Even more, You are the one who knows us so intimately that You named us and call us Your own. You know the pressures we face, the rivers of difficulties and fires of oppression that surround us today.  We call out to You.  We submit ourselves – all that we have been, are, and will be, to You.  Forgive us for our wandering ways.  Strengthen us to walk with You all our days.  Free us from the hardships, for You are the Lord, The Holy One, Our God.

It’s not a time to know how to give all the big picture definitions to what is going on and I certainly have no time or desire to be part of the conspiracy theories that go around the planet.  Let’s be lifted up today, in the middle of our troubles, with the near and loving presence of God who will get us through today and be with us when we wake up tomorrow morning.