Just as the anxieties of 2020 have led many to search for greater meaning in their lives, the pandemic has made it easier for people to explore their spirituality, with the move to online religious worship. 36-year-old Misha Allard from Toronto had quit her corporate job to pursue an acting career - something she felt was her ‘calling’. With productions halted and no work in sight, Ms Allard decided to use the spring to explore another calling - her growing interest in spirituality. ‘I guess I felt I was being led all along.’ she said. Like many millennials, Ms Allard had not attended church in years. She went every Sunday as a child, but lost interest in her teens. She is now in Christian fellowship. Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, who leads a Toronto Reformed Jewish synagogue, has seen attendance grow, especially among young adults. The pandemic had caused most worship services to go online, making it easier for searchers to discover that the Lord is good.

Her atheist parents were surprised when three-year-old Akiane began describing dreams and visions from God. She spent her early years in rural Illinois. No money, no friends, no television or radio, no babysitters - a quiet simple life. She spoke of colourful dreams and visions about heaven, Jesus, and God’s amazing love. Her parents realiszed her focus on God was not inspired by anything in the isolated world they lived in. Akiane had supernatural encounters with the living God and expressed them through her gift of art. ‘Nobody told me who God was; I found Him myself. He’s been there for me through the years. I don’t belong to any denomination or religion. I belong to God.’ As Akiane has got older, some early dreams and visions have faded. ‘Although I have forgotten most of my early heavenly contacts, my recent visions continue in a special way’, she says. ‘I alone know how important Jesus is for me.’

Boris Johnson warned the coming weeks will be the hardest yet, in another national lockdown for England. Schools and universities must switch to online learning, and summer exams will not go ahead. Pray for anxious families facing isolation at home with lack of income or adequate technology to support their stay-at-home school children or effectively work from home. May God give them peace of mind and hope for the future. Some schools are open for vulnerable and key workers' children. Pray for those who are caring for these groups to have a full complement of staff to meet students’ needs, and be able to implement appropriate safety measures to prevent pandemic transmission. Pray for the children who will not now be taking their exams this summer. May the educators and assessors be anointed to give honest and fair grades. Pray also that this lockdown will prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed in the next few weeks.

A survey of 1,318 doctors by Everydoctor found medics who have had their first dose of a Covid vaccine, but their appointments for the second dose have been cancelled as the Government's new policy attempts to give as many people as possible some immunisation. Now the two doses are separated by twelve weeks, not three. Dr Julia Patterson, the lead for Everydoctor, said doctors fear that delaying the second dose which they need to obtain full immunity could lead to them becoming ill or infecting colleagues or patients. In the survey, 13% said that they had received one vaccine dose but their second appointment for immunisation had been cancelled. Another 517 (39%) said they had still not been told when they would have their first dose. ‘The Covid-19 crisis is escalating, and we urgently need to protect frontline workers. If healthcare workers are left unprotected, they are at risk themselves, and they may also pass coronavirus on to vulnerable patients’, said Dr Patterson.