Prayer & Praise

We confess, when we ponder your large governance, that our “chief end” is to glorify you and enjoy you forever.

We confess that the purpose of our life, purposes twinned, are your glory and our joy.

That is our true end!

But when we come to the end of our work together, and the end of our text together, It strikes us that we know less about “ends” than we imagine.

We sing our explanatory doxologies,

We reiterate our concluding slogan that “thine is the kingdom and the glory and the power.”

We add our confident, loud “Amen” to our best petitions.

But-truth to tell-

We cannot see the end;when we do see the end, we do not know its meaning … whether termination or transition.

And so, like our many fathers and mothers always,

We trust where we cannot see,

eating what we are fed,

taking what of recognition we can muster,

restless and present under a myriad of surveillances,

but finally ceding our end to you, in our simple, final prayer:

Come Lord Jesus.

Come among us,

Come to your church in bewilderment,

Come to our state in its vexation,

Come to our world in its insomnia.

Grant us peace with justice, peace with joy, peace at the last, peace on earth … and glory to you in the highest.

Amen.
Walter Brueggemann. Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: The Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (p. 130). Kindle Edition