2023-06-01 A Prayer: Sincerity and Abiding Walk

O Lord, You were with us through it all, and bless as worries amount, deeds requested of us go unanswered, we prove unable to satisfy the critic. See the entire sum and substance of our walk with You as a comment on Man’s proclivity to sin, and Your abiding strength—as bigger Man—to forgive. You are the bigger Person. We fuss not nor linger in wild thoughts of unease, wild worries or frights as to some things being just beyond Your reach. All things are within Your reach, and it humbles us to be able to reflect, that You were there before even our wakeful self was there: You were with us in the trenches and in the strange days, as such days are ticked off and labeled erroneous, rebellious, wicked, presumptuous.

Help, to coach us through personal safety of walk with You, personally accountable whilst personally able to be joy and to celebrate. Help us to know how strange ease and commiseration, walks with one another, do amount up to some brand of heresy or plain sin. See that we simply at that hour existed, no more conscientious of wrongdoing than in the simple sins that to this day beset our better thoughts, our self-righteous ways, our heightened unwelcome as the bar is raised to heightened meaning: where, in church, it is hurtful to do such things, for they are all the more attentive there. Some settings are by expectation loving and firm to care for each other, and there we can recoil, fail, imitate the patterns of those worse sinners “out there”, even in our abiding time together “in here”.

So grant peace amidst a world that catalogs and collects, that rewires the history books somewhat, for there was love in so much that was blithely in hindsight called Error. There was innocence of shelter, You sheltering us and guiding us, there with us, through it all, and we, no more nor less sinful down to the present hour; help, that we so testify to one another, and when we fail to do so, help us to bless the accuser or the naysayer, not making big fuss over their present error. If they are in error, it will take love and not finger-pointing, to usher in the bigger woman or bigger man, the penitent and one sharing in feelings of Goodness here and now, in our services and in our communities.

We pray all this in Your Name, Amen.