Tag: prayer

a prayer for my community

a prayer for my community

This image was uploaded by n1colas to sxc.hu with a royalty free license. Abba in undetectable dimensions,

You are the one that we long to know and learn from.

Please make yourself known to us today in new and fresh ways.

And when we know you in these new and fresh ways, may that knowledge perculate into our new hearts and become radiant by the demonstrable love of our external lives.

May you give us eyes to see your provision in our lives. May you, in your grace, provide what we need, no more, and no less, so that we never forget our daily dependence on this grace.

Help us forgive as you do and so save us from ourselves, the world, and the evil forces that seek to destroy what you are doing and creating in and through us, even today.

Do all this for the sake of your reputation in the world, we plead.

Oh, how easy it is to miss the point.

If I have learned anything about the God of the Bible from my study of it over my few years of life, it is that this God has a consistent historical tendency to side with the underdog, the weak, the oppressed, the persecuted, the beat down, the immigrant, the outcast, & loser. If I have learned anything about the successful, rich (I especially include myself in this category), strong, affluent, high and mighty, arrogant, entitled, native, winners, it is that there is a consistent historical tendency to be convinced that God is siding with them.

One of the larger misconceptions we have about God is that God is insecure like we are. I am just so thankful that God does not stoop to treat it’s enemy like we have a tendancy to treat ours and even goes so far as to ultimately demonstrate and instruct humanity to love them.

Everywhere I look around me, I see examples of people trying with all their might to make life a living hell for their enemies, if not right out condemning them to hell with the presumed authority of God.

God, forgive us. We have no idea what we are doing most of the time. Don’t give up on us. Turn us to your “crazy” ways and us from our “wise” ones. Help us to use our hearts and heads and to hear you and see your ways as brilliant and as subversive as they are.