Ever feel like all you have in this world is a lot of nothing? Emotionally, physically, relationship-wise, materially we can feel entirely less than perfect. It doesn’t help, though, to try to puff ourselves up, or boast about anything that separates us from good relations with each other or with God. In Luke we read this week about about the boasting Pharisee and the messed up tax collector. Both go to the temple to pray, but Jesus reports that it was the tax-collector speaking from the depth of his wrong-related, bereft position who reached God’s heart. Why? Pastor Kent suggested in his sermon that starting in the actual place you actually are is the basis for a sound relationship. If you want to be right with another person you can’t start out lying about who you are. So too spiritually. Here’s a prayer to help us all remember to be where we are, even if where we are is not where we are headed.
Lord of the complex cosmos and complicated lives, we come striving to be close to you, but sometimes so far from ourselves. Help us keep low to the ground of our being. Help us see both ourselves and the world with clarity and humility. Then by the power of your deeper love, help us to act on its power: help us, broken as we often are, to be healers and to be healed. Help us though often mistaken, to be wise in repair and reconciliation. No matter how puffed up we make ourselves we can never approach the sheer magnitude of grace you embody. So help us keep clear, low, and nimble in the ways of showing your love, enacting your just and holy peace, and growing faithfully by leaps and bounds. Amen.
–Rev. Kent Gilbert
For a link to the full service click here:
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