Healing the World: Sorrow without Fear, Bible study in time of Covid19
The Psalms invite us to a deeper encounter with God—and with our fears.
Psalm 42: Longing for God and Psalm 43: Prayer to God in Time of Trouble
"Life is fragile and vulnerable. It is not quickly repaired or reinstalled and never replaced. On the contrary, life is irreplaceable and cannot be repeated. It is precious. And so we worry." Rev. Dr Benjamin Simon, coordinator of the WCC’s COVID-19 Support Team
"....It is especially these vulnerable who cannot just adhere to the call to “stay at home,” because they have to feed their children by earning daily or getting the daily shopping done at the market. They do not have the luxury of a refrigerator, where they can store a week’s worth of groceries. Many do not know how to survive till next week, never-mind securing their financial futures.
....There is also so much uncertainty around the virus, sometimes fuelled by misleading biblical interpretations from some uninformed church leaders or political rulers who do not acknowledge the menace and very real threat which comes from this virus.
Is this the only way out of such a situation, by worrying? Is falling into a deep valley full of sorrows the only thing left for us?"
Prayer
God of life, in our fragility and uncertainty, we turn to you.
Vindicate our confidence in you, showing us your love and your care.
Lift our spirits and our hopes, empowering us with your grace to understand our fears, to face our difficulties, and to wrestle good from them.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Explore the bible studies Healing the World Sorrow without Fear Psalms 42 and 43
Rev. Dr Benjamin Simon, programme executive for Church Relations in the World Council of Churches, is also editor of International Review of Mission and has most recently served as Professor for Ecumenical Missiology at the Ecumenical Institute Bossey, WCC, for nearly four years. He is an ordained pastor of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD) and has served as parish pastor as well as ecumenical officer in his hometown of Karlsruhe, Germany. He was very much involved in ecumenical cooperation between established and migration churches, and he lived some eight years in different African countries. He is a coordinator of the WCC’s COVID-19 Support Team.
