February 2008

Once again I am going to pass along a prayer from Ted Loder’s book of prayers, Guerrillas of Grace. It is a prayer for Lent, which begins with Ash Wednesday, February 6th.  It is a powerful and provocative prayer, portions or all of which may speak to many of us.  He titled the prayer, “Catch Me in My Scurrying.”

Catch me in my anxious scurrying, Lord,

and hold me in this Lenten season:

hold my feet to the fire of your grace

            and make me attentive to my mortality

                        that I may begin to die now

                                    to those things that keep me

                                                from living with you

                                                            and with my neighbors on this earth;

                                    to grudges and indifference,

                                                to certainties that smother possibilities,

                                                            to my fascination with false securities,

                                                                        to my addiction to sweatless dreams,

                                                                                    to my arrogant insistence to how it has to be;

                                    to my corrosive fear of dying someday

                                                which eats away the wonder of living this day,

                                                            and the adventure of losing my life

                                                                        in order to find it in you.

Catch me in my aimless scurrying, Lord,

and hold me in this Lenten season:

hold my heart to the beat of your grace

            and create in me a resting place,

                                    a kneeling place,

                                          a tip-toe place

                  that I may become vulnerable enough

                              to dare intimacy with the familiar,

                                          to listen cup-eared for you summons,

                                                      and to watch squint-eyed for your crooked finger

                                                                  in the crying of a child,

                                                                              in the hunger of the street people,

                                                                                          in the fear of the contagion of terrorism in all people,

                                                                                                      in my lonely doubt and limping ambivalence;

                  and somehow,

                              during this season of sacrifice,

                                          enable me to sacrifice time

                                                      and possessions

                                                                  and securities,

                  to do something . . .

                              something about what I see,

                                          something to turn the water of my words

                                                      into the wine of will and risk,

                                                                  into the bread of blood and blisters,

                                                                              into the blessedness of deed,

                                                                                          of a cross picked up,

                                                                                                      a saviour followed.

Catch me in my mindless scurrying, Lord,

and hold me in this Lenten season:

hold my spirit to the beacon of your grace

            and grant me light enough to walk boldly,

                        to feel passionately,

                                    to love aggressively;

grant me peace enough to want more,

            to work for more

                        and to submit to nothing less,

                                    and to fear only you . . .

                                                only you!

Bequeath me not becalmed seas,

            slack sails and premature benedictions,

                        but breathe into me a torment,

                                    storm enough to make within myself

                                                and from myself,

                                                            something . . .

something new,

                        something saving,

                                    something true,

a gladness of heart,

                        a pitch for a song in the storm,

                                    a word of praise lived,

                                                a gratitude shared,

                                                            a cross dared,

                                                                        a joy received.

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