A Prayer as a New Week Begins Again // Sept. 20, 2020

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 Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar, has been bringing much depth to my prayer life. He has a book of collected prayers called Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth. Here is a prayer he prayed after reading Jeremiah 3:1 - 4:4 on October 23, 2001. I find myself praying this prayer again and again in this age of western deconstruction, racial turmoil, and political religions.



Reach Us

You in your harshness, dismissing,

                                       judging,

                                        condemning

                                       devising evil...

You in your mercy, seeking,

                                willing,

                                hoping,

                                wishing,

                                reaching,

                                weeping.

You in your harshness and in our mercy,

You puzzle us,

You bewilder us,

You keep us off balance,

You as you are...perhaps because of our fickleness,

                                                                   drive you to extremes,

                                                                    press you to craziness,

                                                                    impel you against your better self.

We in our fickleness, waywardness, hard-heartedness,

            we imagine we are in response,

            but we may be at the outset wetting you into vertigo.

We in our empty failure...you in bewilderment,

we waiting for your better self...you here and there,

                                    past vertigo,

                                    back in balance, calling and waiting,

                                                                softly and tenderly,

                                                                wishing us home

                                                                        with you.

We yearning to hear your call, afraid to hear,

        because it means return through the mists of harshness,

                                            through the risk of mercy,

        in a journey we fear and crave,

                want and dread,

                pledge and renege,

                start and hesitate, in all our double-mindedness.

So reach us with your single-mindedness,

        give us new, single hearts of flesh

        that pulse with praise and trust and obedience,

                with all our heart,

                 with all our mind,

                with all our strength, toward you,

                        then our true selves.

We pray in the single-minded name of Jesus. Amen. 


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