蜜芽传媒

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Zahid Hussain

Good Morning.

Not so long ago, one of my close friend鈥檚 lost his mother to the virus that鈥檚 sweeping across the world. I couldn鈥檛 attend the funeral. I couldn鈥檛 even pop round to pay my respects. The sad thing is, he wasn鈥檛 the first person I personally know who鈥檚 lost someone because of the virus. He won鈥檛 be the last.

My Facebook feed is filled not with fake news but the announcement of deaths, of poignant personally written obituaries tapped out on phones. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. Gone. To die in the arms of strangers far from the safe shores of home. It hurts, it really hurts. As a British Muslim with strong and wide family networks the Coronavirus has shaken my world in a way nothing else could. There are no Friday prayers, there are no family gatherings and there are no funerals I can attend. No shaking hands, no hugging, no sharing meals. Society has come to a gaping glottal stop.

Yet despite all of this, the only way forward is to have hope, to hold onto the rope of faith and let it pull you through. In the darkness that鈥檚 fallen we鈥檝e found new and old ways to reconnect. We hold the family鈥檚 we live with tighter. People are discovering videoconferencing apps and sit side by side even when they鈥檙e worlds apart. We鈥檙e catching up with that to-do list that we never quite managed to get to but now can. We鈥檙e learning new languages and skills. We鈥檙e praying more.

I believe that when the darkness recedes and it will, that we鈥檒l return to a changed world, but one where we honour and cherish each other more than we did before. Lord, hold us when we can鈥檛.

Amen.