Prayer To Let Go So We Can Cling and Confide

Protestant Christians Celebrate Reformation Day, October 31.

“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”

Martin Luther. Luther’s Large Catechism, “Commentary on the First Commandment.”

On Halloween Day, 1517, Luther a young Augustinian Monk and scholar nailed 95 “Theses of Contention” to the door of the Cathedral at Wittenberg. This practice was the accepted way of engaging in scholarly debate in the days before books were widely available and the power of Guttenberg’s movable type was only just beginning to be felt. Seeking only to change some minds and a few practices, Luther changed the Western world.

May we come to prayer with faithful hearts in these days asking for the trust and courage to fall away from those old confidences whose seasons have passed but to which we cling. May we come with hearts seeking to know the hope and reassurance for our living which comes only by clinging to and confiding in That which we can only know in faith and trust and courage as we fall. Amen.

Whatever Comes Thy Will Be Done

I found a first edition of Thomas Merton’s, Thoughts in Solitude, at a Used Book Sale awhile back. I’ve read a little Merton almost every day for several years now, so I was quite excited about the find and also about the price, $1.50. After a long week at work solitude seems a necessary prescriptive* so I’ve been reading and meditating on small passages. I am particularly drawn to this: “What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?” (p.31).

Not my will but thine be done and we are seized with Abrahamic faith, raising the knife poised to strike down our most cherished and dearly beloved, those very things, or ideas, or whatevers which are sign and the seal of our blessedness. Prayer is radical business. Growing in faith requires an ever deepening willingness to trust more and more of ourselves to God. Especially, the very things which we have come to believe are God’s special gifts for our lives and our living.

Today, I will pray to learn to trust my work to God, for in truth it is not mine but God’s work. All that I bring to it are God’s gifts to me and the doing is God’s blessing for my life. If this past week it seemed to big and too much and too many and more than I could imagine doing, and people somehow still felt cared for and felt compassion and knew grace and went home with a little bit more wholeness, and if God showed up and cradled us all in her hands and kept us safe it had little to do with me and everything to do with God. A miracle of grace in every group and pastoral-therapeutic encounter.

I pray for confidence in the coming days that whatever comes thy will will be done. Amen

*Truthfully however, this is a second-line medication, last night all I had the strength for was renting “Mall Cop” and watching it half comatose on the couch.

It Is A Horrible Thing To Trust

I am frequently slow and dull to the Lord’s prompting despite my hubris which lulls me into the belief that I am somewhat attentive, on some days, to the movements of the Holy Spirit in my heart. Last Sunday’s Psalm 51 invited me to pray with it all week; being especially drawn to verse 8b, “let bones you have crushed rejoice,” “let me hear joy and gladness” (verse 8a).

Dearest Jesus, crush the bones of my anger, they feel hard and stiff within me and provide the framework for so much that I pray the Holy Spirit would remove from me, for my anger separates me from my sisters and brothers, and most especially from you: “For it is against you and you alone that I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (v.4). Crush these bones that I might hear, ever more clearly, your still small voice speaking from the depths of joy and gladness for my soul. Amen.

Today in church I lifted heart and mind with my sisters and brothers in confessing: “Ruler of all, we confess that we have sought to please ourselves instead of glorifying you. We have set aside the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, and have relied upon our own strength rather than upon your Spirit.

“Forgive our stubborn insistence on doing things our own way, and serving you on our own terms; teach us to seek your kingdom first, and your justice above all else, confident that your care for us is fully trustworthy, and hear our prayers which we offer to you in silence.”

In silence the Spirit prayed: It is a horrible thing to trust your pain to the comfort of God’s love rather than the solace of your own anger.

Yes it is. So much of this journey is not so much about faith, but about learning to live within toward even deeper levels of trust and hope. May the Spirit guide me in the coming days, to seek to comfort and compassion of Jesus for all those pains, real and imagined, which keep me from loving my sisters and brothers as fully as I can. For, dear Jesus, it is only in loving them that I can love you as you love me. Amen.

It's county fair time and I have the honor of leading worship tomorrow morning in the Sheep Barn. I purposely stayed way from the obvious theme.

Psalm 104

Selected verses read responsively

Prayer of Thanksgiving and Dedication

Creator God,

We come before you this day to celebrate this holy life you have called us to. Each day we join with you in the mystery and the majesty your creation bringing forth the bounty of this earth you created for our home and to propagate and tend animals of every sort, entrusted to our care by you for the good of your people here and through the world. We give you thanks for calling into sacred partnership with you.

Yet this calling of our lives is not without difficulty and strain. Prices are often too low and expenses only seem to rise. Sun and rain, wind and snow, can offer blessing as well as curses. Work is hard and days are long and, as blessed as we are, the dark small hours of the morning can make all that worries seem beyond even your good and tender care; that even your face is turned away.

We whose lives are daily dependant on the great mystery of your creation, can do nothing before it but turn again to you and ask your blessing upon our souls and the work of our hands. Into your hands we deliver all that causes us worry and concern, uncertainty and pain. We offer you all our griefs and sorrows, all our emptiness and fears; everything that weighs heavy upon our hearts and causes worry to our souls.

Before these we only recall that it is you who causes the sun to rise, golden-pink in the morning over dew glazed fields and set into latent mystery of creation hidden of the deep-orange horizon beyond the trees. By your hand ours bring lamb and calf, piglet and hatchling into being and by it we are led safely home when our day’s work is done. Your breath offers cool breeze to cool sweaty backs in the hay field, sows new life in the pollen that it spreads.

It is you who brought us to this place of great bounty and set us among good neighbors, family and friends. We remember that it is in the bounty of their love and fellowship that we labor and that we share with them a holy life and heart in you.

May all that we do at home and in the field, in the barn and in our community as well, show the glory of your working in our labors and your joy in the hearts of our loves. Amen.

Blessing Psalm 37: 7a, 5, 3 & 4

My sisters and brothers the Psalmist reminds: Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will act. Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land and enjoy security. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Amen.