Finding a Moment for Prayer or Personal Reflection

On this National Day of Prayer our country is coping with the unprecedented challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each year, this national observance is a time for all Americans — regardless of background — to come together to find strength and resolve. That is particularly important right now, and today I encourage you to try to take a moment either for prayer or personal reflection.

I have always found prayer in music. As a teenager, I was introduced to Randall Thompson’s “The Peaceable Kingdom,” inspired by the Book of Isaiah, and I am increasingly turning to it now.

Listening to Thompson’s compositions, I am reminded that peace is an ideal and a process, and that we are blessed, as humans living in a democracy to be able to find God’s spirit in each other and to do his work with full and glad hearts. My favorite piece in Thompson’s collection of hymns is “Ye Shall Have a Song,” based on Isaiah 30:29: “You shall have a song as in the night when a holy festival is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel.” Listen to that piece and I hope that, like me, you may be able to take a deep breath and find light and resolve.

On this National Day of Prayer, let us heed the call to move forward, together, as a democracy and as people, to do God’s work with “gladness of heart.” To heal, strengthen, and move forward.