2022-12-27 A Prayer: Ambient Reassurance

O Lord, it is so futile to say we believe when we have no room for our doubts. See how we try to assure ourselves and others that we believe in the creed, but internally there is some panic room or place of doubt, where it no longer seems that You are sufficient. You seem no longer sufficiently grand and in charge. You no longer seem something multifaceted enough to keep our attention and to quell our fears. Yet all this we cannot say; we say it with hushed breath. We seem to always deny to others the plain mystery of coming to a faith foundation. It requires more than we think, to allow faith to surround and surmount alternate experience. Yet also it poses that question in season: do you choose to believe, when confronted with the world’s sins, or do you vainly hold on to your own self-sufficiency? It is something simple.

We are ready to go. See that we have weathered all kinds of doubt and confusion. See that we emerge this day awake and alive. See us glad happy, even amidst all kinds of spiritual trial. See us eager to be useful and to allow You to become real and to be Purpose, Ultimate Things. See and discover in us where we clutch and define ultimate things in other ways. See that You find in us eager disciples, and do make what we believe to be sufficient for the day’s worry.

In some way we panic and doubt. In some way the real test of our faith is intended to be to Your praise and thanksgiving, but we couch our hope elsewhere. So help us turn every discouragement to Your glory. Help us turn all rejection and dismissal as greater invite. O God, how can we say to our fellows and gals in the faith that we doubt? How can we not make You all things? How, can we not just believe what we say we believe? See us exacting and laboring, wherever we are in the internalizing of faith in You. See us find good ways and means, happy places, an ambient doctrine that does spell relief, fresh air, and heavenly logic to all we go through. Interpret dream and hope as somehow grounded in great simplicity, when for once we’ve finally allowed other assurances to depart.

We pray all this in Your Name, Amen.