O God, turn your spirit loose now, and me with it. that I may go to where the edge is to face with you the shape of my mortality: the inescapable struggle and loneliness and pain which remind me that I am less than god after all, that you have made me with hard limits, limits to my strength, my knowledge, my days. Facing those limits, Lord, grant me grace to live to the limit of being unflinchingly alive, fully alive, of experiencing every fragile, miraculous, bloody, juicy, aching, beautiful ounce of being a human being; of doing my duty and a little more; of loving the people around me, my friends & enemies; of humbling myself to take others seriously and delightedly; of applying my heart to the wisdom of simplicity, the freedom of honesty. O God, turn your Spirit loose here, and me with it, that I may go to where the silence is to face with you the utter mystery of questions without answers, pain without balm, sorrow without comfort, and fears without relief, which hound my days and haunt my sleep. Facing the mystery, Lord, grant me the grace to wrestle with it until I name the fears and force them to set me free to move on with whatever limp I’m left with; to wrestle with it until the pain teach me and I befriend it, until the silence subdues me into an awareness that it is holy and I am healed by it; to wrestle with it until I go deeper in it to gratitude for all the shapes of wholeness and of hope that bless me. O God turn your spirit loose now and me with it, that I may go to where the darkness is to face with you the terrible uncertainty of tomorrow, of what will happen, what might happen, what could happen, to me and to my children, and to my friends, to my job, to my relationships, to my country; all that I cannot see but fantasize, all that I would prevent but cannot. and so must accept as possibilities. Facing the uncertainty Lord, grant me the grace to look at it directly and openly and truly, to laugh at it with crazy faith, in the crazy promise that nothing can separate me from your love; to laugh for the joy of it, the joy of those saving surprises that also stir in the darkness. And so I trust , despite the dark uncertainty of tomorrow, in the light of my todays in the cross, and in a kingdom coming, and, so, I move on and pray on in the name of Jesus, my friend and my redeemer. Amen! -- T. Loder
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 00:47:10 +0000
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