Prayer & Praise

You are the God who creates and recreates, who judges and delivers, who calls by name and makes new.

This much we gladly confess in praise and thanksgiving.

This much we trust and affirm …

only to ponder the chance that we are too glib,

that we say more than we mean,

that we say more than we can in fact risk.

We make our gingerly confession in a world filled with those who cynically acknowledge none but themselves .. .

and we are their fellow travelers with those who in vulnerability have no chance but prayer to you …

and we stand in solidarity with them.

Thus we ask, beyond our critical reservations, that you be your powerful, active, sovereign self.

Give us eyes to see your wonders around us;

Give us hearts to live into your risky miracles;

Give us tongues to praise you beyond our doubt.

For it is to you, only you, that we turn on behalf of the world that waits in its deathliness for your act of life.

Amen.

Walter Brueggemann. Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: The Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (p. 124). Kindle Edition.