Category: Pages on

A prayer for truth telling

Holy God, who entered our world as the Word,
the Word of truth, of love, of light, and of life,

When we speak words of error, hatred, darkness and death
have mercy:

May those listening see our lies for what they are,

And may you awaken our conscience and grant us repentance;
may you change our very hearts to make them clean, wholly loving you and our neighbor, whoever that neighbor may be.

When we speak words of truth, love, light and life
have mercy:

May those listening take heart and have hope,

And may you grant us the joy and gladness you have always purposed for us,
to be your people with your Word living with us and in us.

Holy God, may your Word be spoken and cherished in all places and by all people.

Through your Son, Word of God, Jesus,
amen.

dw, 7Jul19

As some of you know, from time to time I compose prayers. This one has been brewing in me for quite some time, but I have recently felt an urgency to finish and post it. I pray it may be one of those very small seeds that grows and in some mysterious way provides a place of rest for weary souls.

Grace and peace to you…

p.s. A list of other prayers posted on this site:

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Tags gladness, Jesus, joy, mercy, repentance, speaking truth, truth telling, Word of God, words

hope love

Infallibly fulfilled

All desires but one can fail. The only desire that is infallibly fulfilled is the desire to be loved by God. We cannot desire this efficaciously without at the same time desiring to love Him, and the desire to love Him is a desire that cannot fail. Merely by desiring to love Him, we are beginning to do that which we desire.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

You have made it simple,
so simple only a child,
or some childishness within us
we haven’t trampled in our trudge to adulthood,
has the precociousness and audacity to believe:
that the mere act of turning to You
guarantees a smile
beckoning us to come sit
and be blessed.

dw

Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com

Photo by David Rangel on Unsplash

Tags adulthood, child, childishness, desire, God, infallible, loving God, No Man is an Island, sentences on hope, Thomas Merton

hope Poetry prayer Prayers

Never confounded

Better than hoping for anything from the Lord, besides His love, let us place all our hope in His love itself. This hope is as sure as God Himself. It can never be confounded.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

It doesn’t matter what we do,
you and I,
as long as we are together.

No need for lavish blessings
or miraculous signs;
just You hovering near me will do.

dw

Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com

Photo by Sunyu on Unsplash

Tags God's love, hope, No Man is an Island, sentences on hope, Thomas Merton

hope love

Loving God

Post author By dw
Post date June 9, 2019
No Comments on Loving God

If I believe that He can love me, I must also believe that I can love Him. If I do not believe I can love Him, then I do not believe Him Who gave us the first commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and thy whole mind and all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself.”

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

The system of church doctrine I learned and lived under for too long told me I was incapable of loving God. I’m beginning to believe, instead, that those who preach such doctrines are the ones incapable of loving God or of admitting that many people, in fact, do. Their own systematic theology keeps them from the experience they need and long for. My prayer: Lord, give us all the simple love and courage of Mary, sister of Martha, who chose “the good portion” – sitting at your feet, loving you with all her heart.

Tags church, doctrine, God, hope, loving God, No Man is an Island, sentences on hope, Thomas Merton

Poetry the real self

Escape artists

We are all such escape artists, you and I. We don’t like to get too serious about things, especially about ourselves. When we are with other people, we are apt to talk about almost anything under the sun except for what really matters to us, except for our own lives, except for what is going on inside our own skins. We pass the time of day. We chatter. We hold each other at bay, keep our distance from each other even when God knows it is precisely each other that we desperately need.

Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “A Room Called Remember”

Escape artist maybe,
But a skill learned reluctantly and painfully
To recover from discovering – too many times –
What mattered to me was no matter at all,
Or an annoyance, or an affront.

Ok, well then, nice weather – right, moving on.

We escape to avoid the shame of experiencing that we aren’t worth attending to.
You know it; I know it; we’ve lived it, too often with each other.

Yes, we desperately need each other,
but in practice I make due with keeping what’s most important between myself and God.

And sometimes this blog.

dw