Friday, September 18, 2020
The number 200,000 is superimposed on the daily death report on the cover of this weeks’ Time magazine. It almost seems like yesterday that we had crossed the 100,000 milestone. As of September 15, the reported number stood at 197,589. At this rate, we’ll hit 200,000 by Sunday. The number is overwhelming.
But, then, there are those who would say, “Hey, this isn’t’ as bad as the Spanish flu in 1918. Around 675,000 out of a population of 106 million died at that time. But we are supposed to be a more egalitarian and progressive society, one where the lives of ordinary people really count.
But the fissures of class, money, and race still pervade our society. We must move beyond those fissures in order to conquer this pandemic and the other silent pandemics that hold us captive.
Prayer for the Day
Holy Spirit of Peace, enter our lives
And teach us to seek nonviolence in a violent world;
Break us free from the bars that bind our imaginations,
And give us new hearts to embrace visions of what is possible.
Move us beyond the old answers and help us ask new questions
So we can discover the possibilities of peace for all your children,
In the name of him who came to bring your peace.
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen
Thoughts for the Day
The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported.
James Madison, patriot, President (1751–1836)
The test of democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiencies of transportation but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people.
Helen Keller, activist (1884–1960)
Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high,
who looks far down on the heavens and the earth?
God raises the poor from the dust, and the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes, with the princes of the people.
Psalm 115:5–8