The litter of the week frames my prayers. Garbage phrases, unconsidered decisions, poorly chosen statements. They’re all in my mind as I pray.
I know you’ve seen these things, heard them the way I have. I wonder what you’re saying. I wonder if we’re listening.
Make us listeners. Better listeners. Listeners period. Help us to hear you. Help us to hear ourselves. And then each other.
Perhaps we can surrender some of our words when we hear. Perhaps there’s room in our listening for you to work.
As this month closes, I want to be open to what’s next. I want to notice what I haven’t. I want to capture what I sense but don’t quite see.
I want to feel my senses open. I want to have my heart expand. I want to love and not hate. I want to bring good and not evil to this world.
I want to connect with others and be a connective person for others. I want to help people who can’t help me in return. I want to be larger and not smaller.
I want your help because these things are impossible for me. My motives are so complicated that they stop me. These desires are impossible to cultivate. They aren’t impossible for you.
Grant me what I need, especially the vision to see deeply within, to pull up what’s in me. These roots didn’t come from me. I didn’t plant these hopes within myself.
Do your work. Make me what this murky vision tells me I am.
There are needs beyond your servant’s, and her need today reminds me of how long you’ve been healing before now. You are accustomed to saving and reclaiming and making whole. Do your work as you often do, even when we don’t notice or watch or praise or acknowledge it.
Be the most competent physician during today’s surgery. As each nurse and doctor tend to her, be present in each touch, word, and gesture, making healing happen. Bring recovery when all is done and may strength be in the body of your child and friend and servant.
Grant her family all the courage they need. May they know your mercy, be enveloped in your lavish grace. These things are not difficult for you. In the name of the One who made healing his work. Amen.
Place these words inside all our unsettled parts so that they may be gentle, God-given counter words to what we hear so much.
Transform us in our listening until we believe differently about ourselves, until we believe more.
Open us to your reality and not just our own.
Turn us to this blessing and may it echo within.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
(Numbers 6:24-26)
For some of us countless ideas run around our heads. For others of us the struggle is to start seeing anything at all. We think too much or we don’t grasp enough of your thoughts about us.
Grant us the ability to see when our heads are clouded, the ability to hear when the story is being told somewhere just beyond our ear’s grasp, and the ability to put enough form to that thing so it feels.
May we know your love in bone-deep ways. May you shed light upon dark places in us that haven’t been loved. May you reach us completely.
Help us hold your truths gently. Help us appreciate and respect the people you’ve given our world, the idea generators, the storytellers, and the prophets whose words impact, disappear too quickly, or stay and sustain.
You heal. You made your servant’s body, know his frame, and remember everything within it. You know him, love him, and remember him. So look at and bless him with the sensitivity and care that he needs.
Relieve all manner of sickness. Remove pain. Use doctors and nurses and attending angels to do your work. Grant your servant a strong sense of your company, so that, as he lays and waits and receives both loss and newness, he may always have you.
Grant renewal of body and spirit and mind. This is not difficult for you.
We seek many things. Sometimes, in our seeking, we turn away from you.
Be unmissable this week. Be in our way this season. Be traceable and visible and unmistakable.
As we turn toward what’s ahead, help us see your presence there. Make our attempts to see hoped-for things soul attempts to locate you. Transform our desires until they become desires for you, for the Holy.
You created us to be curious people, resilient people, even stubborn people. You placed within us the hard-to-beat impulse to seek. Grant that we might keep seeking. Grant that we might do as Jesus says and find.
We live in fear and you tell us to be unafraid. You tell us, “Don’t fear.”
Grant that we might revisit your record and find you trustworthy. Anchor us in something deeper than our first, primitive reactions. Drop us into some penetrating truth that the world of death is a world on its way to a fitting close.
Open us to expectation for life even while we move toward Advent. Use us to bring life, to frustrate death the way Jesus did, to remind violence and all its offspring that life still wins. In the strong name of the winner whose coming gives us hope.
As Thanksgiving approaches, help me remember to pray for those who are looking toward the holidays while hurting and grieving. Help me grieve my own losses, too.
Many people have slipped away. Some have been forced to go. Some have chosen to leave. Some have lived brief lives and others very long ones.
Comfort us directly in our losses. Renew love. Replenish strength. Be gracious by supplying our needs according to your immeasurable wealth.
You give good things. You give us each other. Help us to cultivate relationships with those that we love despite distance, despite death. Grant that we might still be grateful for as much as possible.
Be good to us so that we turn toward you, in every way, and find you grieving and loving with us.
77:1 I yell out to my God, I yell with all my might,
I yell at the top of my lungs. He listens.
2-6 I found myself in trouble and went looking for my Lord;
my life was an open wound that wouldn’t heal.
When friends said, “Everything will turn out all right,”
I didn’t believe a word they said.
I remember God—and shake my head.
I bow my head—then wring my hands.
I’m awake all night—not a wink of sleep;
I can’t even say what’s bothering me.
I go over the days one by one,
I ponder the years gone by.
I strum my lute all through the night,
wondering how to get my life together.
7-10 Will the Lord walk off and leave us for good?
Will he never smile again?
Is his love worn threadbare?
Has his salvation promise burned out?
Has God forgotten his manners?
Has he angrily stalked off and left us?
“Just my luck,” I said. “The High God goes out of business
just the moment I need him.”
11-12 Once again I’ll go over what God has done,
lay out on the table the ancient wonders;
I’ll ponder all the things you’ve accomplished,
and give a long, loving look at your acts.
13-15 O God! Your way is holy!
No god is great like God!
You’re the God who makes things happen;
you showed everyone what you can do—
You pulled your people out of the worst kind of trouble,
rescued the children of Jacob and Joseph.
16-19 Ocean saw you in action, God,
saw you and trembled with fear;
Deep Ocean was scared to death.
Clouds belched buckets of rain,
Sky exploded with thunder,
your arrows flashing this way and that.
From Whirlwind came your thundering voice,
Lightning exposed the world,
Earth reeled and rocked.
You strode right through Ocean,
walked straight through roaring Ocean,
but nobody saw you come or go.
20 Hidden in the hands of Moses and Aaron,
You led your people like a flock of sheep.
Sift through the garbage inside us so that when we seek ourselves, we find treasures. Search us and shine your light through us so that we can see ourselves as sparkling vessels capable of repeating the amazing in our work.
You made us. You crafted us. You held us. You called us into being. You celebrated over us. Yours was the first voice blessing and singing and weeping joyful tears.
Enable us to organize and structure our days after the blessings you speak. Grant us the courage to step one step after another in full view of your goodness. Give us the gifts to nourish the world, to use them for good, and to compliment ourselves and you with big, bright smiles.
Yesterday stays with me, with us. And for some of us countless ideas run around in our heads, many of them from before.
For others of us the struggle is to start seeing anything at all. We have so much to do. It feels that way. Where do we start?
Grant us the ability to see when our heads are clouded, the ability to hear what’s just beyond our ears, and the ability to put enough form to our spirit’s hope.
Help us hold life gently. Help us appreciate and respect the models you’ve given our world, the idea generators, the storytellers who help us stay.
Amen.
Michael Washington 