Here is authentic, pandemic-produced piety that stills the soul. It is a reminder of the spiritual gifts imposed by the virus: silence and solitude, a lighter load, new visions and innovations, and our aching, throbbing need for each other. Read it slowly. You will stop often, sometimes lingering long, to ponder your existence, to confront your moral shortfall, to pray for a nurse, or to remember the wall-to-wall pain in our world. They should have taught us to pray like this in seminary.

—Walter B. Shurden, Minister-at-Large at Mercer University