COVID – Prayer-17: You have invaded, Lord, our Hiding Places

Dear Lord, our God,

You have tested your people often through exiles and wars, snake bites and deprivations, under foreign rules and captivities. Even then they have yearned for the junk food of the slavery of Egypt rather than the freedom to be a chosen people. They have bent their backs before idols and made sacrifices to them. They have rebelled against their leaders and scattered their tribes and communities. Through Covid today, Lord, you have brought us back to our families and communities in order to deepen our bonds and connections. And yet we too yearn for the junk food of the market, desire to thumb through the social media for hours and use the “mobility” of the phones to carry it everywhere with their sounds trespassing the peace and sanctity of the family / community and invading their quiet privacy for reflection, meditation or rest.

 These days, Lord, you are breaking our stubborn minds, hardened hearts, stiff necks and unbending backs* that have become as disobedient as our first parents, naked and shameless as we are now stripped of all our hiding places. We had become addictive, Lord, and ran into those unholy areas secretly and privately. Your body, the Church, and her leaders and ministers were accused of falling prey to drinks, rich food, money, sex or abuse of children and women. We had unholy alliances secretly designed in our apparently holy lives that meticulously practiced religiosity in all its details in public through rituals without gospel spirituality. We gave more importance to our privacy than the service for which we were called, to our convenience than safety of others, our ways than the common good. We have fallen, Lord, and become unworthy of your forgiveness.

Have mercy on us, Lord, and forgive us and help us mend our ways and journeys. In Jesus’ name. Amen.