Prayers in the Pandemic: New and Collected Prayers of Hope

You might recognize the flowering tree on the cover of this book as a crape myrtle. Some years ago, this particular crape myrtle was on death’s door thanks to a vicious pruning by Hurricane Irma which stripped the tree bare and left nothing more than a few sickly branches clinging to life. Those first couple of years, when the crape myrtle didn’t seem to grow or flower, I wondered if someone should just dig it up and put it out of its misery. But God had other plans. He brought that crape myrtle out of the storm, from the darkness of death and gave it new life. I wrote the prayers in this book during the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic, a different kind of storm, a figurative storm that upended all our lives. I wrote these prayers during lockdowns and quarantines. I wrote them while my friends and family struggled through their own heartbreaks, and the only thing I could do for them was pray. Like the crape myrtle, we have all been beaten down at times by the storms of life. Perhaps we feel like shells or shadows of our former selves. We wonder how our world will ever be right again. But, know this, you are a child of God, and our God is the God of Resurrection, of new hope, the God who takes what was broken and abandoned and cradles it in the palm of His hand and breathes into it new life. May the prayers in this book comfort you. May God work in you whatever healing it is that you need today. And may you know that He is always with you.