2022-11-09 A Prayer: A Giving Spirit
O Lord, many words may shout forth, but only some are divinely anointed to change the temperature in the air. Only some reckon with our sense of weariness, and the chance therein to submit to Your calling and mission for us.
Such mission is unique to us, we pray, so we are no longer talked down from our purpose by the jesting neighbor. Lord, we do love these our neighbors, and pray for the self presentation sufficiently confident (perhaps?) to safeguard and shelter our own peculiar day’s labors.
Where we add question mark, be there with us, assuring us it is okay to believe. Some phrases even this day, make us timid. But, no, we have crossed the divine threshold and been made over into members of Your holy Church. We simply wonder if anything we say is faithful to that inner Experience of beholdenness. We are held, if that answers any of the former questions. We are granted steadfastness of purpose and inner peace even as the climate rages outside of us.
O Lord, out of a giving spirit, out of a generous heart, so cultivate us to be educated by such religion in others. Help us to see their own lives some brand of miracle, and help us to see that people do walk tightropes of peculiar and unworldly thoughts. People do believe, and do live as though eternal creatures. People do pass off on Your back their own life’s questions. So grant us always to give thanks, and the integrity to stay true to our word: in these things, we shall not tarry; in these things, we shall not fuss; in these things, we shall not complain.
Heavenly aspirations upward; so cultivate us to fight on, not caught up in former battles. Deliver us forth from swaddling clothes unto reliable witness. See us through a majestic battle and a lively, appropriate for our innate gifts and weaknesses, walk that is peculiar to us. We have our own walk, and our own “graduation” from those homes that raised us up. Help us to maintain confidence, even as nagging doubts are contagious. Even as we are credited with a design on life that is cynical; help us to be credited with a naive or innocent purpose, a design deriving from that great innocence You gifted to us, so that we might be free from corruption and judgment and the iller recesses of life.
Help us be strong, like a fortress, though also working together and blessing those near to us as an influential sort of neighborhood. Help with voices wounded, weary, discouraged. They may have flown higher, and thereby closer to the sun. In any case, help us with that gift of personal responsibility. For us You prayed, even before we had it in ourselves to reckon with repentance.
Then, the question is, do we like each other? The answer, as we have a giving spirit, is Yes. We can heal not by finding that elusive fault or playing the blame game with other people, but by blessing and by understanding and by coming alongside.
We pray all this in Your Name, Amen.