Help from the Past & Coronavirus | Part 1
By Darren Moore
I have been both asked and thought myself – what and how should we be praying during this Coronavirus pandemic? Often saints from the past can help. O Palmer Robertson has revised and edited Matthew Henry’s guide on prayer, entitled A Way to Pray, helping us model our prayers on Scripture. I commend it to you, you can buy it here for the UK, and here for the USA, and online there is a version edited by Ligon Duncan et al available here.
Below is the prayer for a time of infectious disease. I have also included prayers from the Prayer Book from two different eras. The Prayer Book framework of prayer was mapped out by Thomas Cranmer and Theodore Beza and is a useful resource. Notice their worldview and their view of both God and self as they come before him and plea their case. A helpful start for our prayers.
When a plague of infectious disease strikes your land, cry out for the Lord’s mercy.
Bless our bread and our water, and take sickness from our land. Deliver us from the pestilence that threatens to engulf us. Command the destroying angel to put his sword into his sheath. Be moved to pity when you see our calamity, and restrain your hand of judgment.
Exod. 23:25; Psa 91:3; 2 Sam 23:16
From “A Way to Pray”, by Matthew Henry, Ed & Revised O Palmer Robertson, (Edinburgh: Banner, 2010), 147
In the Time of Any Common Plague or Sickness
O Almighty God, which in they wrath in the time of King David didst slay with the plague of pestilence sixty and ten thousand, and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest: Have pity upon us miserable sinners, that now are visited with great sickness and mortality, that like as thou disdst them command thy angel to cease from punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us tis plague and grievous sickness; through Jesu Christ our Lord.
From the Elizabethan Prayer Book: 1559
In the time of any common Plague or Sickness
O Almighty God, who in thy wrath didst send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron: and also, in the time of king David, didst slay with the plague of Pestilence threescore and ten thousand, and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest; Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality; that like as thou didst then accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying Angel to cease from punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us this plague and grievous sickness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
From the Book of Common Prayer 1662
