Prayer & Praise
We have learned to speak almost every language except our own.
We are well schooled in the language of hate and of fear and of greed and of anxiety.
We know the language of domination and of excessive deference.
We understand completely the grammar of liberalism and conservatism, rhetoric that is revolutionary and reactionary.
But we are strangers in a strange land.
Teach us afresh to trust our mother tongue of praise and grief.
We thank you for our speech teachers, of many mothers and fathers in many times and many places and many cultures – all of whom know better than do we the ways of truth that heal and of life that enlivens.
Be your true word on our lips and receive our utterances back to you.
We thank you for our mother tongue come in the flesh.
Amen.
Walter Brueggemann. Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: The Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (p. 72). Kindle Edition.
Would you keep a special family in your prayers? Janet lost her husband 4 years ago, and last week, lost both sons, her only children, to lymphoma within 3 days of one another. The sons leave a wife, a fiancé, and 4 daughters. Please pray for strength and God’s mighty hand to uphold them.
Praying for Janet. Lord, have mercy.
Yes praying for Janet, God grant her and the families involved much grace. Thanks all for your prayers about my eye, I still have an eye which about a month ago was not so good. I lost most of my sight but I can live with that. I feel really awful for Janet was a tragedy I am truly sorry for her loss.
Oh my….praying for Janet this morning. Praying for mercy and great strength. Praying for the wife and fiance and all the children.
The mother tongue of praise and grief? I concur that such language comes from the human side for all humans – the praise of a moment’s success or the soft hug of friendship; the tears of grief at the end of a relationship or at the side of a casket.
However, if we are the adopted children of God, then we need to speak our ‘father’s tongue of love’ upon the wounded, ignoring doctrinal differences, and by not walking on the other side.
I offer that our mother’s tongue comes easy and is tied to the fortunes of earth.
However, our father’s tongue must be learned. His language – even His logos – is tied to the impartiality of blessings poured out upon those we call ‘evil and good’ or those we call ‘just or unjust’. This is part of what makes believers earn the title of being called ‘the children of God’. [Matt 5] Whilst all believers may be children by adoption, not all have the title bestowed upon them.