I'd like to invite you to join me in a day of prayer and fasting tomorrow. If you are able and well, I'd encourage you to subsist on water and prayer alone until sundown, at which time you can join us for our Good Friday service online. The point of withholding something good from our mouths for a time is to fill up on something better and more nourishing. So reflect on Jesus' passion for you, his sharing in your sufferings, his willing entry into death on our behalf. Take all the things you're feeling and thinking this week and give them to him, for he still suffers with us in great love. Ask him to heal our hearts, our city, our country, and our world; ask him to heal the human race of all that we suffer from, all the ways we deal death to one another. Ask him to help all nations hunger and thirst after righteousness, that we might be filled. And of course pray for a quick end to the Coronavirus. May God have mercy on us all through the Passion of his Son and our King, Jesus.
Lamentations 1
How lonely sits the city
that was full of people!
She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
The roads to her mourn,
for none come to the festival;
all her gates are desolate;
her priests groan;
she has no comforter.
“O Lord, behold my affliction,
for the enemy has triumphed!”
The enemy has stretched out his hands
over all her precious things;
All her people groan
as they search for bread;
they trade their treasures for food
to revive their strength.
“Look, O Lord, and see,
for I am despised.”
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
which was brought upon me.