A Prayer a Day: Good morning,Lord. This morning the news was doing a story on essential and non-essential workers. It turns out the most famous and wealthy in our society, athletes, musicians, and movie stars are non-essential according to the Coronavirus quarantine guidelines. While the news report was playing I started trying to list who I thought might logically be on the essential list. I thought of doctors, nurses, medical support staff, grocery store workers, police, firemen, EMT workers, pharmacists, and nursing home staff. I checked online for the official list and found: car repair shops, gas stations, clinical workers running covid-19 tests, dentists, bus and transit drivers, truckers, farmers, sanitary workers, dentists, airport workers, janitors, and psychologists. None of the lists I read listed teachers, government officials (local, state, or federal) or clergy of any religious groups. Lord, I understand that in a pandemic situation, the goal of a quarantine is to stop the spread of a deadly virus, so the term essential means critical to the health and safety of the whole population. One thing I know, you, Lord, make a different kind of list and it lists all of us as essential. Holy Father, please be with these people on the essential list working to keep us alive. Help them to have the physical and mental health to continue doing their jobs. Everyone is under pressure, those working hard at their jobs and those stuck at home, worrying about paying their bills and feeding their families. Help us all, Lord, to encourage and support each other through this challenge. Especially, Lord, comfort the 60,000+ families, who have lost family members to death. Wrap your loving arms around the one million plus Americans, who have been infected with Coronavirus. Holy God, please help those working on medicine and a vaccine to treat the virus. You, Lord, didn’t make the essential list either, of course, it was a list of human beings and their jobs. You, Lord, are # 1 on our essential list. We love you, Lord, and couldn’t make it one day without you. Come Holy Spirit and make us strong: amen.