for simplicity

/ Eric Mathews / 1 Comment
photo by Maheima Kapur on Unsplash
 
 
Jesus, my life feels cluttered.
Not just with material things, 
    but with my own distracted thoughts and desires.
I wish that things were simpler – not just my lifestyle,
    but the inner attitude of my heart.
I know it’s time to return to simplicity 
    when I stop being thankful and start feeling entitled;
    when I begin grasping for everything in sight 
         rather than trusting you to provide;
    when I hold on desperately to what I own
        instead of sharing it with those around me.
Jesus, help me to be thankful –
    viewing every possession and good occurrence 
    as a gift from you
  so I get to the place where I expect nothing 
    but am delighted with everything.
Help me to trust that my life is ultimately under your care.
Free me from feeling as if I have to own everything,
    because the truth is, all things belong to you.
Help me to be generous – willing to share all I have with others
    as an expression of your generosity to me.
Restore in me a thankful, trusting, generous spirit 
    so I can live simply.
 
Ronald Beers, Chief Publishing Officer for Tyndale
_______________________
 
 
Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. 
After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, 
    and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. 
So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.

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have mercy and cleanse me

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
photo by Zeynep Yilmaz via pexels
 
 
Have mercy on me, O life-giver, through your goodness.
In your great tenderness soothe away my faults.
Cleanse me of my guilt,
    do not hold my failures against me.
For I have come to see that I fail you,
    when I have not acknowledged with my whole being
    that I am made truly in your image;
    in not walking in your ways I have sinned against you.
You are love and truth itself
    and seek sincerity of heart;
  teach me the secrets of wisdom.
Cleanse me from all that prevents me
    from listening to your word.
 
Ianthe Pratt, organizer of Catholic women’s activities in London
____________________________
 
 
Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
    and justified when you judge.
Surely I was sinful at birth,
    sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
    you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
    wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

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mourning my sin

/ Eric Mathews / 2 Comments

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

 
Eternal Father,
You are good beyond all thought,
    but I am vile, wretched, miserable, blind;
My lips are ready to confess,
    but my heart is slow to feel,
    and my ways reluctant to amend.
I bring my soul to you;
    break it, wound it, bend it, mold it.
Unmask to me sin’s deformity,
    that I may hate it, abhor it, flee from it.
My natural abilities have been a weapon of revolt against you;
    as a rebel I have misused my strength,
    and served the foul adversary of your kingdom.
 
Give me grace to mourn my unconscious folly.
Grant me to know that the way of transgressors is hard,
    that evil paths are wretched paths,
    that to depart from you is to lose all good.
I have seen the purity and beauty of your perfect law,
    the happiness of those in whose hearts you reign,
    the calm dignity of the walk to which you call,
         yet I daily violate and condemn your precepts.
 
All these sins I mourn, lament, and for them cry pardon.
Work in me a more profound and abiding repentance;
Give me the fullness of a godly grief that trembles and fears,
    yet ever trusts and loves,
    which is ever powerful and ever confident;
Grant that through the tears of repentance may see more clearly
    the brightness and glories of your saving cross.
 
 
__________________________
 
 
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, 
    but worldly sorrow brings death. 
See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: 
    what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, 
    what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. 

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beginning Lent

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image via Pexels
 
 
Loving Lord,
at the beginning of this Lenten season,
we are met with the challenge of handing over
every bit of our lives that do not come from You.
To rid ourselves of what clutters our lives,
and all that distracts us from the simple truth
of Your love for us.
 
Your prophets have called us to change the way we worship—
to make internal sacrifices instead of external ones.
To seek justice, and love kindness,
and walk humbly with You
each and every one of our days.
 
If we don’t give anything up for Lent,
then let us at least give up this:
that we might cease living in ways that disconnect us from You,
for every one of our steps is like a circle around Your temple.
Perhaps this Lent,
we can give up our way
and give ourselves to Your way for us.
 
So, lead and guide us on this Lenten way.
May we walk with Jesus toward the hill just outside of Jerusalem.
May we like Him take up our cross and follow,
spending each moment of our lives living responsively to You,
just as Christ Himself did.
For that is the faithful way. 
Amen
 
Patrick Ryan, Presbyterian pastor in West Virginia.
 
___________________________
 
 
Then he said to the crowd, 
“If any of you wants to be my follower, 
    you must give up your own way, 
    take up your cross daily, 
    and follow me. 
If you try to hang on to your life, 
    you will lose it. 
But if you give up your life for my sake, 
    you will save it.
 

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answering our askings

/ Eric Mathews / 2 Comments
 
Lord God, 
  grant us to see that 
      even as the Word must become flesh,
      the prayer must become physical:
  grant our prayers 
      eyes to see the invisible,
      ears to hear the inaudible,
      lips to voice the unspeakable,
      hands to clutch the intangible.
Then to complete the body of yearning,
  equip our prayers with 
      legs to step out on faith,
      legs to progress one step at a time,
      legs to walk with our Savior
  in answering our very own askings.
In the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
 
Cecil L. Murray, 1929 – , African American Pastor and Ethicist
 
__________________________
 
 
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, 
    to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 
And awe came upon every soul, 
    and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.  
And all who believed were together and had all things in common.  
And they were selling their possessions and belongings 
    and distributing the proceeds to all, 
    as any had need.

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Forgive our sin, O Lamb of God

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Lamb of God, via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED
 
 
The sins of the world,
such dreadful sins.
not just the personal sins
but the solidarity of sin
greater than the total
    of individual sin
nuclear evil in endless fission,
    O Lamb of God.
 
The sin of racial pride
that sees not the faith
    that all men are divinely made
nor the riches of pigment
    in portrait faces,
the same psychology
and religious search,
that each is the sibling
    for whom Christ died.
 
The burgeoning greed
    that never heeds the needs of others
involved in a merciless system,
looking only at profit and dividend,
the last of possessions
    that cannot accompany us
    at our last migration:
Take away these sins,
    O Lamb of God.
 
The massive sin of war,
    millions of lives impersonally destroyed,
billions of pounds wasted
    on weapons, bombs,
    truth enslaved,
    the hungry still unfed,
    grief stalking unnumbered homes:
Weep over us,
    O Lamb of God.
 
The sin of the world,
    alienation from thee
    not just weakness
    but evil intention,
organized and unrestrained
    with its own momentum
    leading to death:
O Lamb of God,
    take away this sin.
 
Begin with me,
O Lamb of God,
    forgive my sins,
    cleanse my heart,
    disarm my will
    and let me fight
    armed with thy truth, righteousness and love
    with thy cross of love
    incised upon my heart,
        O Lamb of God.
 
George Appleton, 1902-1993, Anglican Bishop in England and Jerusalem
 
________________________
 
 
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 
“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
 

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You have loved us first

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God is Love, by Wingchi Poon, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
 
 
Father in Heaven!
You have loved us first, help us never to forget that You are love,
  so that this sure conviction might triumph in our hearts
    over the seduction of the world,
    over the inquietude of the soul,
    over the anxiety for the future,
    over the fright of the past,
    over the distress of the moment.
But grant also that this conviction might discipline out soul
    so that our heart might remain faithful and sincere 
    in the love which we bear to all those whom
        You have commanded us to love
        as we love ourselves.
 
You have loved us first, O God, alas!
We speak of it in terms of history
    as if You have only loved us first but a single time,
    rather than that without ceasing You have loved us first in all things
    and every day and our whole life through.
When we wake up in the morning and turn our soul toward You –
    You are the first – You have loved us first;
If I rise at dawn and the same second turn my soul toward You in prayer,
    You are ahead of me, You have loved me first.
When I withdraw from the distractions of the day and turn my soul toward You,
    You are the first and thus forever.
And yet we always speak ungratefully 
    as if You have loved us first only once.
 
Soren Kierkegaard, 1813-1855, Danish philosopher and theologian
_______________________
 
 
God showed how much he loved us 
    by sending his one and only Son into the world 
    so that we might have eternal life through him. 
This is real love—not that we loved God, 
    but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 
No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, 
    God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.


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A final meditation

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
Sir Thomas More, via Wikimedia Commons
 
 
Give me grace, good Lord
To count the world as nothing,
To set my mind firmly on you
And not to hang on what people say;
To be content to be alone,
Not to long for worldly company,
Little by little to throw off the world completely
And rid my mind of all its business;
Not to long to hear of any worldly things;
Gladly to be thinking of you,
Pitifully to call for your help,
To depend on your comfort,
Busily to work to love you;
To know my own worthlessness and wretchedness,
To humble and abase myself under your mighty hand,
To lament my past sins,
To suffer adversity patiently, to purge them,
Gladly to bear my purgatory here,
To be joyful for troubles,
To walk the narrow way that leads to life,
To bear the Cross with Christ,
To keep the final hour in mind,
To have always before my eyes my death,
    which is always at hand,
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell,
To pray for pardon before the judge comes;
To keep continually in mind the passion 
    that Christ suffered for me,
For his benefits unceasingly to give him thanks;
To buy back the time that I have wasted before,
To refrain from futile chatter,
To reject idle frivolity,
To cut out unnecessary entertainments,
To count the loss of worldly possessions ,
    friends, liberty and life itself as absolutely nothing,
    for the winning of Christ;
To consider my worst enemies my best friends,
For Joseph’s brothers could never have done him
    as much good with their love and favor
    as they did with their malice and hatred.
 
Thomas More, 1478-1535, English statesman, beheaded by Henry VIII
________________________
 
 
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. 
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 
Be wretched and mourn and weep. 
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
 

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to become people of your light

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
Adorazione dei Magi by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo via Wikimedia Commons
 
 
On Epiphany day,
     we are still the people walking.
     We are still people in the dark,
          and the darkness looms large around us,
          beset as we are by fear,
                                        anxiety,
                                        brutality,
                                        violence,
                                        loss —
          a dozen alienations that we cannot manage.

We are — we could be — people of your light.
     So we pray for the light of your glorious presence
          as we wait for your appearing;
     we pray for the light of your wondrous grace
          as we exhaust our coping capacity;
     we pray for your gift of newness that
          will override our weariness;
     we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust
          in your good rule.

That we may have energy, courage, and freedom to enact
         your rule through the demands of this day.
         We submit our day to you and to your rule, 
                                  with deep joy and high hope.
 
Walter Brueggemann, 1933 -,  American Protestant Old Testament theologian
Prayers for a Privileged People
 
________________________________
 
 
After this interview the wise men went their way. 
And the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem. 
It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. 
When they saw the star, they were filled with joy! 
They entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, 
    and they bowed down and worshiped him. 
Then they opened their treasure chests 
    and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

a new beginning

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
image by geralt via pixabay
 
 
Lord God, the saying,
    “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
  reveals a deep Christian insight.
At the beginning of a new year, 
    many have nothing better to do than make a list of bad deeds
    and resolve from then on to begin with better intentions,
    believing that a good intention already means a new beginning.
Sometimes we believe that on our own we can make a new start
    whenever we want.
But that is an evil illusion: 
    only You can make a new beginning with us whenever You please, 
    but we cannot make a new beginning with You.
Therefore, we cannot make a new beginning at all;
    we can only pray for one.
When we are on our own and live by our own devices,
    there is only the old, the past.
Only where You are can there be a new beginning.
We cannot command You to grant it:
    we can only pray asking You for it.
And we can pray only when we realize that we cannot do anything,
    that we have reached our limit,
    that someone else must make that new beginning.
 
after Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906 – 1945, German  theologian and martyr
 
__________________________
 
 
Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.
 

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