being: without God, nothing that now is could be. How could God be responsible to someone or something that only exists through God? So it seems we have to say both that God, being responsible for everything, is responsible for COVID-19 and, at the same time, that God cannot be responsible for anything in the way we understand ‘being responsible’. You might say that whoever makes a thing is responsible for it; so God must be responsible in the same way. The trouble is that God doesn’t make things: God creates things, which is very different. Someone who makes something, a table, for example, is not responsible for keeping the table in existence, preventing it from ceasing to exist. But that is exactly what God as Creator does. All this is hard to get one’s head around. But, then, what else should
we expect – if it really is God we are trying to think and talk about and pray to? And, as far as I am concerned, there’s no point at all in praying or trying to pray to anyone or anything less than God. How then should we pray in a time of COVID-19? When we pray to God, we stand entirely naked before someone much, much greater and more loving than we can know or understand. This is not some demi-god whom we could flatter with our praise, or bargain with our promises. We can and we must express our longing for God, for peace, for healing, for safety, for salvation. The psalms are a good model for our prayer in these days of COVID’. Many of them arise out of desperate fear and suffering and even despair: over thousands of years, through wars and plagues, these words have
become engraved in hearts and worn smooth by the lips of women and men like us, real people who actually existed. Do not reprove me in your anger, LORD, nor punish me in your wrath. Have pity on me, LORD, for I am weak; heal me, LORD, for my bones are shuddering. My soul too is shuddering greatly – and you, LORD, how long…? Turn back, LORD, rescue my soul; save me because of your mercy. For in death there is no remembrance of you. Who praises you in Sheol? (Ps.6) Using the psalms we can join our voices with theirs in prayer to the same God in whom we too believe. Like them, we try sometimes to flatter or bargain with God (“who praises you in Sheol?”). But we shouldn’t imagine our prayers will work by ‘bringing God around to our side’ or causing God to ‘relent’. We shouldn’t
First Communicants participate in the procession at St John Baptist, Matacuane, Beira, Mozambique
Mukai -Vukani No.77 | July 2020 |
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