Author: Eric Mathews

Send your Word, O Lord

/ Eric Mathews / 1 Comment
Church of the Light / Bergmann, CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons
 
Send your Word, O Lord, like the rain,
Falling down upon the earth.
Send your Word.
We seek your endless grace,
With souls that hunger and thirst,
Sorrow and agonize.
We would all be lost in the dark
Without your guiding light.
 
Send your Word, O Lord, like the wind,
Blowing down upon the earth.
Send your Word.
We seek your wondrous power,
Pureness that rejects all sins,
Though they persist and cling.
Bring us to complete victory;
Set us free indeed.
 
Send your Word, O Lord, like the dew,
Coming gently upon the hills.
Send your Word.
We seek your endless love.
For life that suffers in strife
With adversaries and hurts,
Send your healing power of love;
We long for your new world.
 
Yasushige Imakoha, translated by Nobuaki Hanaoka, Japan
 
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As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
    and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
    for an everlasting sign,
    that will endure forever.”

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Reconcile me that I may be made whole

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image / picryl
 
O God, Giver of Life, Bearer of Pain, Maker of Love,
You are able to accept in me 
    what I cannot even acknowledge.
You are able to name in me 
    what I cannot bear to speak of.
You are able to hold in Your memory 
    what I have tried to forget.
You are able to hold out to me 
    the glory that I cannot conceive of.
Reconcile me through Your cross to all that I have rejected in myself,
    that I may find no part of Your creation to be alien or strange to me,
    and that I may be made whole,
through Jesus Christ my lover and my friend.
 
From Southwell Litany
 
__________________________
 
 
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
   and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ,
    provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

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take our lives and transform them

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image / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

 

O Lord, take all our sorrows 
    and use them to show us the nature of your joy.
Take all our sins and, forgiving them,
    use them to show us the ways of true pleasantness 
                                and the path to true peace.
Take all our broken purposes and disappointed hopes 
    and use them to make your perfect rainbow arch.
Take all our clouds of sadness and calamity
    and from them make your sunset glories.
Take our night
    and make it bright with stars.
Take our ill-health and pain 
    until they accomplish in your purpose
    as much as health could achieve.
Take us as we are with impulses, strivings, longings
    so often frustrated and thwarted,
    and even with what is broken and imperfect,
  make your dreams come true,
through him who made of human life a sacrament, 
    of thorns a crown, of a cross a throne,
    even through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
Leslie D. Weatherhead, 1893-1976, London Minister
 
__________________________
 
 
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time
    are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

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I want to stop running

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image / pxfuel
 
Eternal God, you are a song amid silence,
    a voice out of quietness,
    a light out of darkness,
    a Presence in the emptiness,
    a coming out of the void.
You are all of these things and more.
You are mystery that encompasses meaning,
    meaning that penetrates mystery.
You are God,
    I am man.
I strut and brag.
I put down my fellows
    and bluster out assortments of my achievements.
And then something happens:
    I wonder who I am,
        and if I matter.
Night falls,
    I am alone in the dark and afraid.
Someone dies,
    I feel so powerless.
A child is born,
    I feel touched by the miracle of new life.
At such moments I pause . . .
    to listen for a song amid the silence,
    a voice out of stillness,
    to look for a light out of darkness.
I want to feel a Presence in the emptiness.
I find myself reaching for a hand. 
 
Oftentimes, the feeling passes quickly,
    and I am on the run again:
        success to achieve,
        money to make.
O Lord, you have to catch me on the run
    most of the time.
I am too busy to stop,
    too important to pause for contemplation.
I hold up too big a section of the sky
    to sit down and meditate.
But even on the run,
    an occasional flicker of doubt assails me,
And I suspect I may not be as important 
        to the world
     as I think I am.
Jesus said each of us is important to you.
It is as if every hair of our heads were numbered.
How can that be?
But in the hope that is is so,
I would stop running,
        stop shouting,
    and be myself.
 
Let me be still now.
Let me be calm.
Let me rest upon the faith that you are, God,
    and I need not be afraid. Amen.
 
Kenneth G. Phifer, Presbyterian minister and author
 
__________________________________
 
 
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
    how he has brought desolations on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
    he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the chariots with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God.
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth!”

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my merciful Redeemer

/ Eric Mathews / 1 Comment
image / falco / pixabay
 
O Lord, I am your clay. You are my potter and skilled master.  Because you pronounce me a sinner, I accept your word.  I sincerely acknowledge and confess the godless condition which shows itself in my flesh and my entire nature.  I do so that you may be glorified and I humiliated.  As with all others, I am sin and death; you are life and righteousness.  Together with all people I am the worst evil; you are and remain the highest good.  I acknowledge and confess all this.  I am led to this confession not by my reason, which would rather cover up and disguise this godless condition, but through your law and promises, I want your honor to stay and increase.  
 
Lord, I am your sin; you are my righteousness.  Therefore I am glad and have victory without fear.  For my sin cannot outweigh or overpower your righteousness.  Neither will your righteousness permit me to be or remain a sinner.  Your Spirit, O Lord, must make and keep me alive.  Blessed are you, O faithful God, my merciful Redeemer.  In you alone do I trust.  Amen.
 
Martin Luther, 1483 – 1546, German Reformer
 
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I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
 

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Your disposition toward me is goodness

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image /peasap / flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
 
Lord, remind me that Your disposition toward me is goodness.
    Keep me from the dark suspicion that You are not good.
You act with generosity and benevolence.
    Keep me from believing that You are not for me.
You are gracious and compassionate.
    Keep me from the assumption that I am beyond Your grace.
You are faithful and steadfast.
    Keep me from the opinion that Your disposition toward me could change.
You are rich in love and never petty in Your anger.
    Keep me from doubting the richness of Your love for me.
 
Kurt Bjorklund, 1968- , American Minister and author of
 
_________________
 
 
You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?
Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! 
So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, 
    how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.

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the royal way of humility

/ Eric Mathews / 1 Comment
image / Wilrooij, CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons
 
My dear Lord and Savior, I come to you burdened and oppressed by many worries and slavish work, by an unbearable yoke, which I have imposed on myself because of my lack of humility.
 
It is a burden which I have deserved, but it is also the heavy yoke of a sinful world, of collective pride and arrogance.  We are tied together in this lamentable condition.  I groan and sigh, realizing my plight in this double slavery of mine and the world.  What a relief if I listen to your invitation, “Come to me all whose load is heavy”! Yes, now I dare to come.
 
The more I meditate on the crushing burdens you have carried in your humility, accepting even the most atrocious humiliation from proud and arrogant human beings, the more I am filled with grateful wonder.  In your divine glory and your human humility you are totally Other, so different from the close-minded and high-handedness of man.  You are the wholly Other, the only true God, so unlike man-made gods.  You have come into the valley of tears where misery is constantly multiplied by humankind’s ridiculous pride.  You come with the astonishing remedy, the humility of the Son of God, of the Redeemer, who has freely made himself “one-of-us” in all things except sin: the totally holy and humble One.
 
You come to us whose vanity and pride are odious.  You come on the royal road of humility, showing us that this is the way to you and to the heart of the Father, the way to the hearts of our fellow men and the way of salvation.
 
Humble heart of our Divine Master, I entrust myself to your school.  I want to learn from you, day by day, the royal way of humility.  It is your own love that teaches us.  
 
Lord, transform our hearts, make them mirror images of your own heart.  Make them fountains of healing for many.  Lord, make us humble.
 
Bernard Häring 1912 – 1998, German Catholic moral theologian
 
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In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature[a] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 
 rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!
 

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You, Who Are

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Transfiguration / Giovanni Bellini / Wikimedia Commons
 
You, who are over us,
You, who are one of us,
You, who are –
Also within us,
May all see You – in me also,
May I prepare the way for You,
May I thank You for all that shall fall to my lot,
May I also not forget the needs of others,
Keep me in Your love
As You desire that all should be kept in mine.
May everything in this, my being, be directed to Your glory
And may I never despair.
For I am under Your hand,
And in You is all power and goodness.
 
Give me a pure heart – that I may see You,
A humble heart – that I may hear You,
A heart of love – that I may serve You,
A heart of faith – that I may abide in You.
 
Dag Hammarskjöld, 1905 – 1961, Swedish diplomat, UN Secretary General
Markings freely modified
 
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The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,
    the world, and all who live in it;
  for he founded it on the seas
     established it on the waters.

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
    Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
    who does not trust in an idol
    or swear by a false god.

They will receive blessing from the Lord
    and vindication from God their Savior.
Such is the generation of those who seek him,
    who seek your face, God of Jacob

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Forgive them all, O Lord

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image / pxfuel
 
Forgive them all, O Lord:
our sins of omission and our sins of commission;
the sins of our youth and the sins of our riper years;
the sins of our souls and the sins of our bodies;
our secret and our more open sins;
our sins of ignorance and surprise,
and our more deliberate and presumptuous sins;
the sins we have done to please ourselves
and the sins we have done to please others;
the sins we know and remember,
and the sins we have forgotten;
the sins we have striven to hide from others
and the sins by which we have made others offend;
forgive them, O Lord, forgive them all for his sake,
who died for our sins and rose for our justification,
and now stands at thy right hand to make intercession for us,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
John Wesley, 1703-1791, English churchman and founder of Methodism
 
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My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.
But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father
—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins,
and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
 

blessings of home

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Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash
 
O God, bless those who have no homes.
Bless those who have to live away from home
  in lodgings and boarding-houses and hotels.
Bless those who have been left alone,
  and who are solitary now.
Bless those who are searching or waiting for a house.
Specially bless young couples who have to live in furnished rooms,
  or with relatives, and who have never had the chance
  to be alone together and to have a home of their own.
Bless those who keep house for other people,
  and who have no house of their own.
Bless old people who are coming to the end in some institution
  which is very comfortable but which is still not home.
Help us who have the blessing of a good home
  to keep an open heart and an open door
  to those less fortunate than ourselves.
This we ask for your love’s sake. Amen.

from the Audenshaw prayers, UK
 
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Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 
Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.  
Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, 
as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.

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