I confess to you that I can’t touch this Jesus who a woman has to remind of who he’s supposed to be. I appreciate what it says about the humanity of our Christ but that’s not who I need him to be right now. I need Christ to be the savior of the world when so much is going wrong.
To all of that is keeping you and me awake at night, I want to remind you that there are people of faith praying even when you cannot. There are people that continue to find words to what is beyond words. I offered two prayers from Maren Tirabassi last week but again this week she speaks to the horrors that climate change bring to the shores of the United States in this prayer as Hurricane Ida approaches landfall. And then, there is this lovely prayer from enfleshed for when there is only sadness. And then, there was this prayer by the Rev. Stephanie Crowder for back to school that arrived in my inbox and reminded me of what is possible.
Laura Stephens-Reed shared this prayer and it is what I needed to hear most. It could work well as a prayer in worship this coming Sunday as you lean together into trust. It’s that word that caught in my throat in praying through Psalm 25 and the center of the prayer I offer you this week.
A Prayer Seeking Trust
Inspired by Psalm 25 O God, we trust in your goodness. We step into the unknown every day in the hope that that goodness will carry us. We want to trust that it is there and that it has always been there but we have been moved. We have been pushed to the edge and doubted that goodness in the land of the living but we are not as strong as we thought. We are not who we believed we were. O God, we want to trust you with our whole hearts. We want to believe that you surround us with possibility. We do. Is is in that faith that we beg you to be good. Be the goodness that we cannot see in every headline. Be the goodness that we cannot find in every unmasked stranger and let that goodness -- your goodness -- turn our crooked, jaded, hurting hearts away from every doubt and worry so that there is only trust. There is only your infinite grace.abiding within us. Let us find that goodness again in you. O God, we seek your goodness. Amen.
That’s all I’ve got for this week. I’m praying for you, dear pastor. I’m praying for you so much.
Cooking with Elsa 
Beautiful, and thank you … and, yes, have a hard time with the first part of Mark, but I am planning (it is only Monday) to preach the Isiah passage, the second half of Mark and the Paralympics … how it is that the “blind” run races and the “lame” play wheelchair rugby
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