2022-11-01 A Prayer: Zero Falsehood

O Lord, with zero to show for it, with zero relevant to the powers that be, we anticipate, we do not bemoan, but grab the bull by the horns and anticipate, deep miscommunication and being misfits. Help us who have zero to dabble well with the world; see us pause over potential rest, yet prefer the fellowship with You instead of the fleeting accolades of Man and pleasures of sin.

See us latching all upon a Hope, a life experience and trajectory not passe nor unimportant: Your message to us is all-important; if we’ve gone deeper, it is that plain words might proceed from our hearts, a little relevant to this one, oh, and a little relevant to that one, all seeing us as passable if not worthy of accolades; this, this breadth, is wondrous by design, and sincere in its refusal to grant false mirages as places of rest and companionship.

For were we to have any more companions than we have, we would be walking a way of ease; instead, You have given us the hard-fighting soul, the addict, the troubled, the ones we keep silent about because they do not “fit” into the class-divisive and cataloged generalities of life. So, yes, we do have friend and fellow-traveler, but not in any way that can be traded on, bartered with, used to demonstrate our own sufficiency and normalcy.

We are abnormal until You grant words and ways to state the unthinkable: that our Friend went to the Cross; that our lives are cruciform and chock full of secrets, things we long to speak of but cannot for fear of betraying some actual outlay of Christendom, some mock construction made hastily to celebrate this one or that one, these ones who Today came close to holy things, who Today met holiness, personal blessedness, individual gospel righteousness of a kind not reserved for the solemn pew-dwellers. Help us to count our blessings, and guide our solemn words to work miracle and passability in the face of a redoubled opposition. See that we be inoffensive, if only that our outlay may be guided to simple pastures and direct confrontation with what divisive and socially-acceptable spirits do reign.

See that our peer smiles our way, but then is themselves inducted, thus tempted and almost lashing out, or in some way reckons with their own peculiar calling, the bedrock place where the meek in thought and the modest in ambition do fellowship together and call to one another: “Here, Jesus helped me cope here”; “There, I saw a demon come out of Man”; “Together, shall we brave the day, brace for what comes, and the knowledge of the good”. 

If only we could dream big enough, as to the level on which You operate. Then, we would be mindful of what a wealth, even as according to a different accounting, we are the ones with nothing to boast in. Save in You and Your Cross, and the steadfast hope it has spelt and made real to many. 

Grant us therefore to be indispensable cogs in Your wheels, in a project not directly according to our hands, perhaps, but nonetheless ones whom You can bank on for a season, in appropriate time. And see us learn to long to subsist in those places of zero, because they are cause and circumstance for some kind of wonder.

We pray all this in Your Name, Amen.