Dean Moore: Invitation to Lament
Beloved Community,
In this week of horrifying tragedy, I invite you to pause together to remember and mourn the coronavirus deaths of more than 100,000 people in the United States and more than 360,000 worldwide. Then, pause again and pray for people who have suffered and continue to suffer from the virus, while the known cases now surpass 1.76 million in the U.S. and 5.9 million across the globe. Every one of these numbers represents a human being who was and is precious in God’s sight and in the sight of those who loved and cared for them. Let them be precious to you and me as well. God, have mercy.
On this mournful night, I also beseech you to lift your pain-filled prayers and anguished cries for George Floyd, who was violently murdered on the streets of Minneapolis on May 26. Such violence against a fellow human being calls for collective mourning and for unceasing prayers for Mr. Floyd’s family, loved ones, and angry, hurting community. And pray for a radically transformative justice in Minneapolis and in your own communities that are spread far and wide.
In the next 24 hours, I invite you to light a candle or pause to breathe deeply of the pain and loss. Today is not a day to be conservative, progressive, or “middle of the road”; nor is it a day to be a Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian. It is a day to be HUMAN – to draw from the deepest wells of your faith and to lament. We need to mourn as a community, and we can only do so if we dare to be still and let the tragedies soak into the depths of our being. Lament is a pathway to share pain, to be fully human, to journey toward the heart of God, who holds more pain than all of us together can imagine and who will never let us go.
Blessings and prayers,
Mary Elizabeth