2023-03-02 A Prayer: Reimagined

O Lord, we learned to pray at Your knee. Help us to cope with a broken reality, a tainted form of those high visions we were given. See us visionary, in faith, always thinking things through until all is reversed and good prospect turned to ruin. See us humored and patronized by Your loving gifts of vision or explanation; yet stay near to the explanation that Your patience is greater than ours, Your end times more imminent than ours, times when people will live into an immediate brand of love, there being no time to grow ourselves according to our newfound “wisdom” and proof of concept. We are wise in You to let others do the upbuilding work.

Hear us in our shell of security; hear us though we dislike to confront pain and life, whether it is happening to other people or to ourselves; we hide and worry. We are hurt when we allow our heart to wander and invest itself.

Any vision You give is a blessing and a curse, as we fear for things lost and things put on hold endlessly, but also for near realities, loss of loved ones, untold movements of things spiritual and “out there”. Guard us as outer becomes near; see as we sort through most simple horizons and hopes; we are easily pleased, yet frightened by the possibilities for life change, if we’ve lost sight of life change in Your place, at Your hands, in Your heavens and earth.

When all was on a good track, we built up fantastic structures and notions, only to see these ruined and reversed: all good things suddenly used for evil. We panicked, and our sleep was interrupted. We were coaxed back to Your embrace by Your Spirit, to learn anew that Your redemption takes time, and works in manifold ways. Yet You pain us with visions of losses, though our losing spirit is content with the fruits gifted to us while You rewrite and reform and reshape. We invite our heart today to love abundantly.

We pray all this in Your name, Amen.