2022-12-13 A Prayer: Faith Amidst Hardship

O Lord, see us dried out; see our hardships at a level just beyond what we can bear; see us, look at us, and tell us that You care for us just the way we are. Help, in the time and chance of history, where some see great revolutions. In the revolution by chance some poor are lifted up, and others—the vast majority—are simply passed over, their revolution not coming yet.

But create with our polite and civilized companionship, create resilience and Revolution of kindness; make so that our appearance is pleasing to You in heaven, and to our fellow Man. Man looks to us for assurance, for suture to a conscience horribly desiccated and suddenly without comfort, as judgment comes now to one, and now to another. Man looks to the beggar and to the poor; he looks to those who have weathered the most but remained spiritual and faithful; remained warm.

See us not as people-pleasers. See us, though “looked down upon”, still as living beings, with stories and manifestly difficult companions of vastly different stripe and circumstance. See us as living, even if we are the rejectamenta of so much of civilized conversation. Help us be the Gospel. See how Your teaching is radical, and comfort us too as those who are radical in first expressions and preaching that go beyond the poor digs. We go beyond our absolute and dire need, to be strangely hopeful, a broken limb that acts as though it were all healthy. We are healthy, O Lord, but at what cost to appetite and body?

Why, do so many die, while the wealthy and entitled fuss over proud notions? Can we believe, as we are withering away, as our neighbor is in hardship, that all changes in an instant; the revolution will for some be televised; it will reach our front steps; we will be authority on what our preaching is, how in this day and age the poor teach and survive, even when horribly at the wrong end of the stick, receiving what no man or woman should have to go through. Hardships, You cohabit with us through them.

You who can make all difficulty go away, saw revolution within the generation, and yet it has been two millennia of waiting. And the promised fruit of that patience is spiritual, we pray; some get rich off of a good story, and if this feeds the hungry, so be it. But also You teach us via hardships, on a spiritual level, and we thank You for helping us thus to forgive the world for its disdain. Grant us hearts willing to share with those who haven’t shared with us. Help us to forgive, and to grow in faith, and to bless even amidst our hardship.

We pray all this in Your Name, Amen.