patient, kind & compassionate Lord

Do you roll your eyes in frustration, Lord,
   when I pay no attention to you, to your truth,
      – not even to common sense?

Do you want to dope slap me, Lord,
   when I miss the better, right choice to make
     – staring me right in the face?

Do you ever turn and walk away
   when I, for the thousandth time,
      make the same foolish, stupid mistake?

No, Lord, you don’t…

Instead,
   you show me time and again
      the things I’ve failed to see,
   you look with compassion and mercy
      on me and all my folly,
   you always, freely, pardon my sins
      and grant me a new beginning…
Patient, kind and compassionate Lord,
   be gracious to me today – as you always are –
      and help me grow in your grace…

Amen. 

 

Fr. Austin Fleming, Roman Catholic Priest in Massachusetts

Concord Pastor Comments

 

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Psalm 78:36-39

 

But all they gave him was lip service;
    they lied to him with their tongues.
Their hearts were not loyal to him.
    They did not keep his covenant.
Yet he was merciful and forgave their sins
    and did not destroy them all.
Many times he held back his anger
    and did not unleash his fury!
For he remembered that they were merely mortal,
    gone like a breath of wind that never returns.

An Unfathomable Mystery

ecce homo by Honoré Daumier, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

God, we understand the gospel 

    to be an incomprehensible reversal

    of all righteous and pious thinking.

You declare yourself to be guilty to the world

    and thereby extinguish the guilt of the world.

You yourself take the humiliating path of reconciliation

    and thereby set the world free.

You want to be guilty of our guilt

    and take upon yourself the punishment and suffering

    that this guilt brought to us.

You stand in for godlessness, love stands in for hate,

    the Holy One for the sinner.

Now there is no longer any godlessness, any hate,

    that you have not taken upon yourself, 

    suffered and atoned for.

Now there is no more reality and no more world 

    that is not reconciled with you and in peace.

That is what you did in your beloved Son Jesus Christ.

 

“Behold the man!”

See the incarnate God,

    the unfathomable mystery of your love for the world.

You love human beings.

You love the world – 

    not ideal human beings, but people as they are,

    not an ideal world, but the real world.

 

after Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906 – 1945, German  theologian and martyr

I Want to Love These Days With You

 

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John 3:16

 

For this is how God loved the world: 

He gave his one and only Son, 

    so that everyone who believes in him 

    will not perish but have eternal life.

to share in your triumph

painting by Duccio di Buoninsegna, via Wikimedia Commons

 

O Christ, the brightness of God’s glory

    and express image of his person,

  whom death could not conquer,

    nor the tomb imprison;

as you have shared our mortal frailty in the flesh,

    help us to share your immortal triumph in the spirit.

Let no shadow of the grave affright us

    and no fear of darkness turn our hearts from you.

Reveal yourself to us as the first and the last,

    that Living One, 

    our immortal Savior and Lord.

Amen.

 

Henry Van Dyke, 1852 – 1933, American diplomat and Presbyterian clergyman

The Westminster Collection of Christian Prayers

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Philippians 3:20-21

 

But our citizenship is in heaven. 

And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,

    who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, 

    will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

believing in the resurrection of Jesus

image, by William Hole, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

Almighty God,
Who through the death of your Son 

    has destroyed sin and death,
And by his resurrection 

    has restored innocence and everlasting life,
That we may be delivered from the dominion of the devil,

    and our mortal bodies raised up from the dead:
Grant that we may confidently and whole-heartedly 

    believe this,

And, finally, with your saints, 

    share in the joyful resurrection of the just;
through the same Jesus Christ,

    your Son, our Lord.

Martin Luther, 1483-1546, German Reformer

Encyclopedia of Prayer and Praise

 

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John 20:31

 

But these are written that you may believe 

    that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, 

and that by believing 

    you may have life in his name.

 

Easter Prayer of Pope Gregory the Great

source by Luca Giordano via Wikipedia

 

It is only right, with all the powers of our heart and mind, 

    to praise You Father and Your Only-Begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Dear Father, by Your wondrous condescension of Loving-Kindness

    toward us, Your servants, You gave up Your Son.

Dear Jesus You paid the debt of Adam for us to the Eternal Father 

    by Your Blood poured forth in Loving-Kindness.
You cleared away the darkness of sin 

    by Your magnificent and radiant Resurrection.
You broke the bonds of death and rose from the grave as a Conqueror.
You reconciled Heaven and earth.
Our life had no hope of Eternal Happiness before You redeemed us.
Your Resurrection has washed away our sins, 

    restored our innocence and brought us joy.
How inestimable is the tenderness of Your Love!

We pray You, Lord, to preserve Your servants 

    in the peaceful enjoyment of this Easter happiness.
We ask this through Jesus Christ Our Lord, 

    Who lives and reigns with God The Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 

    forever and ever.

Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540 – 604) of Rome, Patron Saint of Teachers

source

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1 Peter 1:3

 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again 

to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

waiting prayer for Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday by Roxolana Luczakowsky via Facebook

 

 

This is the hardest time to pray:
after the drama and catastrophe,
before the angels and the big reveal.
The passion, the agony, the desperate grief
have given way to numbness
and absence
in this time in between.

God seems to be offstage,
preparing for the final scene,
taking care of ancient souls in other worlds
or clothing the hidden, broken body
in resurrection glory.

So let our prayer this day be plain
and to the point:

May God be with us in the waiting,
and may we wait with hope,
today
and every time in between.

Amen.

 

Kerry Greenhill, Methodist Deacon and Minister

source

 

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Matthew 27:57-61

 

As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, 

    who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. 

Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him.

Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, 

    and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. 

He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. 

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb.

the last step of love

Cristo crucificado, Titian via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

A few hours more,

A few minutes more,

A few instants more,

For thirty-three years it has been going on.

For thirty-three years you have lived fully minute after minute.

You can no longer escape, now; you are there, 

    at the end of your life, at the end of your road.

You are at the last extremity, at the edge of a precipice.

You must take the last step,

The last step of love,

The last step of life that ends in death.

 

You hesitate.

Three hours are long, three hours of agony;

Longer than three years of life,

Longer than thirty years of life.

 

You must decide, Lord, all is ready around you.

You are there, motionless, on your Cross.

You have renounced all activity other than embracing these 

    crossed planks for which you were made.

And yet, there is still life in your nailed body.

Let mortal flesh die, and make way for eternity.

Now, life slips from each limb, one by one, finding refuge in his 

    still beating heart.

Immeasurable heart,

Overflowing heart.

Heart heavy as the world, the world of sins and miseries that it bears.

 

Lord, one more effort.

Mankind is there, waiting unknowingly for the cry of its Saviour.

You brothers are there; they need you.

Your Father bends over you, already holding out his arms.

Lord, save us,

Save us.

 

See.

He has taken his heavy heart,

And,

Slowly,

Laboriously,

Alone between heaven and earth,

In the awesome night,

With passionate love,

He has gathered his life,

He has gathered the sin of the world,

And in a cry,

He has given all.

‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.’

 

Christ has just died for us.

 

Michel Quoist, 1918 – 1997, French Catholic priest and writer 

Prayers of Life

 

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Luke 23:44-46

 

It was now about the sixth hour,

    and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, 

    while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 

Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, 

    “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” 

And having said this he breathed his last.

Jesus, touch our eyes

Andrey Mironov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Lord Jesus, touch our eyes,
    as you did those of the blind;
then we shall see
    in things that are visible
    those things which are invisible.

Lord Jesus, open our ears,
     heal our wounds and purify our lives,
     as you did those who came to you;
then we shall hear and perceive what is true
     amidst the sounds of the world,
     and find wholeness in ourselves.

after Origen, 185—254, Alexandrian Theologian

The Book of a Thousand Prayers

 

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Mark 8:22-25

 

They came to Bethsaida, 

    and some people brought a blind man 

    and begged Jesus to touch him. 

He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. 

When he had spit on the man’s eyes 

    and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, 

    “Do you see anything?”
He looked up and said, 

    “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”
Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. 

Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, 

    and he saw everything clearly.

 

Have mercy on my darkness, my ashes

photo by Elvis Bekmanis on Unsplash

 

Lord, have mercy.

Have mercy on my darkness, my weakness, my confusion.

Have mercy on my infidelity, my cowardice, my turning about in circles,

    my wandering, my evasions.

I do not ask anything but such mercy, always, in everything, mercy.

My life here at Gethsemani – a little solidity and very much ashes.

 

Almost everything is ashes.

What I have prized most is ashes.

What I have attended to least is, perhaps, a little solid.

 

Lord have mercy.

Guide me, make me want again to be holy,

    to be a man of God even though in desperateness and confusion.

I do not necessarily ask for clarity, a plain way,

    but only to go according to Your love,

    to follow your mercy, to trust in Your mercy.

 

Thomas Merton, 1915 – 1968, American Catholic writer and Trappist monk

Dialogues with Silence

 

_______________________

 

Psalm 30:8-12

 

To you, Lord, I called;
    to the Lord I cried for mercy:
“What is gained if I am silenced,
    if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
    Will it proclaim your faithfulness?
Hear, Lord, and be merciful to me;
    Lord, be my help.”

You turned my wailing into dancing;
    you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
 that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.
    Lord my God, I will praise you forever.

 

for simplicity

photo by Maheima Kapur on Unsplash

 

 

Jesus, my life feels cluttered.

Not just with material things, 

    but with my own distracted thoughts and desires.

I wish that things were simpler – not just my lifestyle,

    but the inner attitude of my heart.

I know it’s time to return to simplicity 

    when I stop being thankful and start feeling entitled;

    when I begin grasping for everything in sight 

         rather than trusting you to provide;

    when I hold on desperately to what I own

        instead of sharing it with those around me.

Jesus, help me to be thankful –

    viewing every possession and good occurrence 

    as a gift from you

  so I get to the place where I expect nothing 

    but am delighted with everything.

Help me to trust that my life is ultimately under your care.

Free me from feeling as if I have to own everything,

    because the truth is, all things belong to you.

Help me to be generous – willing to share all I have with others

    as an expression of your generosity to me.

Restore in me a thankful, trusting, generous spirit 

    so I can live simply.

 

Ronald Beers, Chief Publishing Officer for Tyndale

365 Pocket Prayers

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1 Timothy 6:6-8

 

Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. 

After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, 

    and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. 

So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.