Another prayer from Leaving Ruin:
Dear God,
I know death is without victory, but it is winning tonight, pressing down on me, like a slab, the execution of old where rocks pile on until the witch is crushed. We all die, and it terrifies me, but more, my life without Joy, without Alex, and Mrs. Eric, and without Ruin or without Sara, or one of the boys, terrifies me, and who will it be tomorrow? Death stalks me like a predator, cutting down my life, memory by memory, chance by chance, and thou I may live forever, right now I am dead inside, all feeble, and wish to simply lie in the road and fade into nothing as cars roar by. If I open my chest to you, O Lord, and to life, it is too much, too much, and I will die too much to ever return.
Job said though you slay me, yet will I trust you, and I’m working on that, but it’s hard. All death is foul murder, and slays, and I am slain as well, and I’m not Job. I’m just a guy who can’t grasp the meaning of so many loves, so many deaths, so many cruel good-byes, and so much hateful life.
Forgive me, God, as I lie here, sinning, perhaps, in my distrust, or is it anger? Lonely, self-pitiful, and like a two-year old, mad that Daddy can’t fix it.
I wish I could praise you tonight, and sleep well, nestled in a deep faith, but I can’t. Maybe trust will come again with the morning.
Jesus,
Amen
This was the final prayer in the book, though there are over 100 pages remaining in the story itself. He waited and waited for a word from God but felt he never did until, as he slid deeper into despair he reads the following in his father’s faded Bible:
It had swept over me unannounced. The words had broken my heart, and all the walls besides. There, in my dad’s humped scribble: “If I ask God to give me the things I need; then I must assume that I have the fulfillment of my prayer in whatsoever cup he gives me to drink.” For better or worse, I took it to mean my God had spoken.
I am acutely aware that not all stories end in a comfortable happily-ever-after moment. May you find God’s presence and/or voice today. Until you hear/see/feel Him, hang on…
Blessings,
Shiann
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Dark days ...
A prayer from Leaving Ruin, using the thoughts and the cares of the book’s main character, but modeling a life of prayer for us:
Dear God,
Sometimes we don’t know what to believe. Bless the people who live there, with their loss, and their dark days of wandering. We don’t know what to do with our weakness, our pain—too much to bear—but we know you are faithful, the God who is more powerful than all the hurt of the world combined.
Heal us, lift us, hold us together when we come apart, and use us to heal, as we have been healed. May we know your grace, and know that what life we have is of you—indeed, the very touch of your hand. Bless Alex, Lord, and take his soul to be at peace. And thank you that his despair, his pain, became a treasure in the hearts of his friends.
And for Jerri, Lord. Send Jesus, and let him meet her, and may he tell her just who he is, so that she may be sure in her faith, and rest.
In Jesus,
Amen
I often pray that God will make Himself tangible to those who are hurting. I know that is a bit different. I long for times when God seems so real to me like the pillow under my head when I need comfort, like the arms of a friend in a hug I desperately need.
Please let God fill you so you can fill others. Please don’t give up on yourself b/c there are others who may need you. Today, if you don’t get style points, just get through and love people.
Hang on, there is more to do and see and love and live for!
Shiann
Dear God,
Sometimes we don’t know what to believe. Bless the people who live there, with their loss, and their dark days of wandering. We don’t know what to do with our weakness, our pain—too much to bear—but we know you are faithful, the God who is more powerful than all the hurt of the world combined.
Heal us, lift us, hold us together when we come apart, and use us to heal, as we have been healed. May we know your grace, and know that what life we have is of you—indeed, the very touch of your hand. Bless Alex, Lord, and take his soul to be at peace. And thank you that his despair, his pain, became a treasure in the hearts of his friends.
And for Jerri, Lord. Send Jesus, and let him meet her, and may he tell her just who he is, so that she may be sure in her faith, and rest.
In Jesus,
Amen
I often pray that God will make Himself tangible to those who are hurting. I know that is a bit different. I long for times when God seems so real to me like the pillow under my head when I need comfort, like the arms of a friend in a hug I desperately need.
Please let God fill you so you can fill others. Please don’t give up on yourself b/c there are others who may need you. Today, if you don’t get style points, just get through and love people.
Hang on, there is more to do and see and love and live for!
Shiann
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The hope of holiness ...
A prayer from Leaving Ruin:
God,
Pure in heart seems impossible. Miraculous if anything. You command these things that lie only in your hand to give. And we fail miserably. But you, O God, have promised that you will be our God, and that you will not test us in ways that will only destroy, and you will be with us always. David was an adulterer and a murderer, and his heart was like yours. Pure might be a way to say it.
Lord, if I sin like David, make my heart like his, so that it might be like yours. Help us to choose. In the moments of temptation, when money is needed and stealing is possible; when loneliness is my name and sexual sin is a real but fleeting comfort, when faithfulness seems impossible, and the hope of holiness a mockery in the face of real life, help us to choose you. We want to choose the pure, the righteous, the good.
God, we are blind, but we want to see you. Forgive us, and let us sin no more.
We receive your forgiveness as the free gift it is. We raise our eyes, and you are in the faces of our friends, our family. Blessed is your heart, O God, for it is pure, and it is only through your heart that we can see your face, and the face of your Son.
In faith,
In Jesus,
Amen.
I pray that God gives you the courage today to look at yourself, to really analyze yourself.
I pray you see that which needs changing and, rather than holding on to it, you give it to God, knowing that in return your heart is cleaner, deeper, healthier, and more useful.
I pray that you have the courage to wait in His embrace while He purifies you.
Purify me, Lord, from ways that aren’t of you.
Help me to run into your arms when the purifying starts.
I surrender all to you, not my will but Thine
The sweetest thing I know is to let your Spirit show
Shiann
God,
Pure in heart seems impossible. Miraculous if anything. You command these things that lie only in your hand to give. And we fail miserably. But you, O God, have promised that you will be our God, and that you will not test us in ways that will only destroy, and you will be with us always. David was an adulterer and a murderer, and his heart was like yours. Pure might be a way to say it.
Lord, if I sin like David, make my heart like his, so that it might be like yours. Help us to choose. In the moments of temptation, when money is needed and stealing is possible; when loneliness is my name and sexual sin is a real but fleeting comfort, when faithfulness seems impossible, and the hope of holiness a mockery in the face of real life, help us to choose you. We want to choose the pure, the righteous, the good.
God, we are blind, but we want to see you. Forgive us, and let us sin no more.
We receive your forgiveness as the free gift it is. We raise our eyes, and you are in the faces of our friends, our family. Blessed is your heart, O God, for it is pure, and it is only through your heart that we can see your face, and the face of your Son.
In faith,
In Jesus,
Amen.
I pray that God gives you the courage today to look at yourself, to really analyze yourself.
I pray you see that which needs changing and, rather than holding on to it, you give it to God, knowing that in return your heart is cleaner, deeper, healthier, and more useful.
I pray that you have the courage to wait in His embrace while He purifies you.
Purify me, Lord, from ways that aren’t of you.
Help me to run into your arms when the purifying starts.
I surrender all to you, not my will but Thine
The sweetest thing I know is to let your Spirit show
Shiann
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
How forgiveness begins ...
A prayer from Leaving Ruin:
Dear God,
Somewhere, a man hits a woman, and a woman dies, and the man’s life is severed, and a child is dropped from a killing height, and papers are signed, death certificates and warrants, and sin rolls through the earth like a wave of hell, and that anyone smiles is a miracle of humility and grace that only you can author.
Lord, how forgiveness begins is absurd, and hidden, and a mystery that I run toward, and from, and you are that mystery, and I stand dumb, mute, astonished, like a brick cut in half, chiseled into a beginning shape by the rough hand of time, and discipline, and love.
Oh, Lord, leave me, for if I see your face, or its shadow, or even if I sit with your word in my lap, I die, for I am sin, I am wrong, I am pride, I am lust, I am the seven deadly sins, and they are tattoos on my soul, full of spikes and piercings and skull’s bones, and how can you stand the hate hidden within? Is love this deep? Is blood, even the Christ’s, enough to clean, enough to slake even my deadly thirst, and praise is due the one who replies to this accusation, and says, yes, it is enough, my blood is enough, and my love is that deep, and there is nothing that can separate me from you, for you are mine, and are mine forever.
An unworthy servant, I bow.
Thanking Jesus, and in his name,
Amen
It is both frightening and comforting to look at ourselves in the mirror in light of the Cross. The older I get, the more acutely I experience the pain of my sin. When life was simpler and thinking was black-and-white for me, I thought my sin was minor and not hurtful. Over time, my thought-sins were exposed to be quite hurtful to myself and others. I wonder, at times, if the blood of Christ is enough. I fear, at times, that it is not. I hope, at all times, that it is. Logically and Theologically, I knew Jesus is enough.
Oh, but on the sad days. On the days that I don’t know if I have the trust and humility required to continue my contact with this Source of Life. Those days are the hard ones, when depression burns and the desire to run away overwhelms.
Yet, Christ is enough and His blood covers and heals and makes whole. He is to be praised and worshipped. He is enough, even when I am not enough. He hangs on to me even when I am not certain I have the courage to hang on to Him.
Romans 8:33-39
Who can accuse the people God has chosen? No one! God is the one that makes them right. Who can say that God’s people are guilty? No one! Christ Jesus died, but that is not all. He was also raised from death. And now he is at God’s right side, speaking to him for us. Can anything separate us from Christ’s love? Can trouble or problems or persecutions separate us from his love? If we have no food or clothes or face danger or even death will that separate us from his love? As the scriptures say “for you were in danger of death all the time. People think we are worth no more than sheep to be killed.” (Ps 44:22)
But, in all these troubles, we have complete victory through God, who has shown his love for us. Yes, I am sure that nothing can separate us from God’s love-not death, life, angels, or ruling spirits. I am sure that nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us or nothing below us - nothing in the whole created world - will ever be able to separate us from the love God has shown us in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Grace and peace,
Shiann
Dear God,
Somewhere, a man hits a woman, and a woman dies, and the man’s life is severed, and a child is dropped from a killing height, and papers are signed, death certificates and warrants, and sin rolls through the earth like a wave of hell, and that anyone smiles is a miracle of humility and grace that only you can author.
Lord, how forgiveness begins is absurd, and hidden, and a mystery that I run toward, and from, and you are that mystery, and I stand dumb, mute, astonished, like a brick cut in half, chiseled into a beginning shape by the rough hand of time, and discipline, and love.
Oh, Lord, leave me, for if I see your face, or its shadow, or even if I sit with your word in my lap, I die, for I am sin, I am wrong, I am pride, I am lust, I am the seven deadly sins, and they are tattoos on my soul, full of spikes and piercings and skull’s bones, and how can you stand the hate hidden within? Is love this deep? Is blood, even the Christ’s, enough to clean, enough to slake even my deadly thirst, and praise is due the one who replies to this accusation, and says, yes, it is enough, my blood is enough, and my love is that deep, and there is nothing that can separate me from you, for you are mine, and are mine forever.
An unworthy servant, I bow.
Thanking Jesus, and in his name,
Amen
It is both frightening and comforting to look at ourselves in the mirror in light of the Cross. The older I get, the more acutely I experience the pain of my sin. When life was simpler and thinking was black-and-white for me, I thought my sin was minor and not hurtful. Over time, my thought-sins were exposed to be quite hurtful to myself and others. I wonder, at times, if the blood of Christ is enough. I fear, at times, that it is not. I hope, at all times, that it is. Logically and Theologically, I knew Jesus is enough.
Oh, but on the sad days. On the days that I don’t know if I have the trust and humility required to continue my contact with this Source of Life. Those days are the hard ones, when depression burns and the desire to run away overwhelms.
Yet, Christ is enough and His blood covers and heals and makes whole. He is to be praised and worshipped. He is enough, even when I am not enough. He hangs on to me even when I am not certain I have the courage to hang on to Him.
Romans 8:33-39
Who can accuse the people God has chosen? No one! God is the one that makes them right. Who can say that God’s people are guilty? No one! Christ Jesus died, but that is not all. He was also raised from death. And now he is at God’s right side, speaking to him for us. Can anything separate us from Christ’s love? Can trouble or problems or persecutions separate us from his love? If we have no food or clothes or face danger or even death will that separate us from his love? As the scriptures say “for you were in danger of death all the time. People think we are worth no more than sheep to be killed.” (Ps 44:22)
But, in all these troubles, we have complete victory through God, who has shown his love for us. Yes, I am sure that nothing can separate us from God’s love-not death, life, angels, or ruling spirits. I am sure that nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us or nothing below us - nothing in the whole created world - will ever be able to separate us from the love God has shown us in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Grace and peace,
Shiann
Monday, November 16, 2009
Living bread ...
Another prayer from Leaving Ruin:
And again O God,
We are hungry. We are thirsty. We are famished for what we cannot name. Jesus, you spoke, and gave that longing a name. Make us righteousness, give us righteousness, lead to understand that the hunger is for you, for your food, the will of the Father, the body and the blood of you—the Christ. Bless us in the search, in the digging, planting, and harvesting of lean thought with which to feed our starving, shrinking souls. Make us both food and the fed in these churches, and do not let us merely drift in the knowledge of our need.
In Jesus, Amen
In work with fears and trauma, in particular, naming the issue becomes the first big step to healing. Unclaimed emotional pain cannot be helped. It is baggage left to rot in the psyche until it is named, claimed and exposed.
A new commercial on TV by the Church of Scientology names that longing as a search for truth with the statement that they are in possession of The Truth. There is no question this longing occurs. God woos us with this longing.
Sometimes we experience the longing in the form of a craving that we just can’t seem to fill. We stand in front of the fridge and imagine how each thing there will fill us, yet nothing is sufficient.
Sometimes it is the need to be alone. We sit and think and imagine yet don’t find the insight we seek.
Sometimes this longing sends us into groups of people. We laugh and connect, even intimately, yet there is not fulfillment there.
So, Jesus steps in. He is the name for our longing. He brings, in the Spirit, the courage to face the unnamed pain. Immanuel, God with us, the embodiment of our hope. May his presence fill us up so that we can be the vessel to feed others.
Blessings,
Shiann
And again O God,
We are hungry. We are thirsty. We are famished for what we cannot name. Jesus, you spoke, and gave that longing a name. Make us righteousness, give us righteousness, lead to understand that the hunger is for you, for your food, the will of the Father, the body and the blood of you—the Christ. Bless us in the search, in the digging, planting, and harvesting of lean thought with which to feed our starving, shrinking souls. Make us both food and the fed in these churches, and do not let us merely drift in the knowledge of our need.
In Jesus, Amen
In work with fears and trauma, in particular, naming the issue becomes the first big step to healing. Unclaimed emotional pain cannot be helped. It is baggage left to rot in the psyche until it is named, claimed and exposed.
A new commercial on TV by the Church of Scientology names that longing as a search for truth with the statement that they are in possession of The Truth. There is no question this longing occurs. God woos us with this longing.
Sometimes we experience the longing in the form of a craving that we just can’t seem to fill. We stand in front of the fridge and imagine how each thing there will fill us, yet nothing is sufficient.
Sometimes it is the need to be alone. We sit and think and imagine yet don’t find the insight we seek.
Sometimes this longing sends us into groups of people. We laugh and connect, even intimately, yet there is not fulfillment there.
So, Jesus steps in. He is the name for our longing. He brings, in the Spirit, the courage to face the unnamed pain. Immanuel, God with us, the embodiment of our hope. May his presence fill us up so that we can be the vessel to feed others.
Blessings,
Shiann
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