31 Days of Trusting Grace - Day 5 - A Prayer for the Week

Lord, what is there to say today, when I finally stop and breathe?  Shall I speak of your love and your grace and how good you are?  Shall I cry out for the brokenness and the pain and the oppression?  Is it possible to do both God?  Is it possible to count gifts and lament suffering?  Can our hearts even handle it, Father?  Will You teach us, Jesus, to live like You - all in?  Teach us to not hold back our hearts or fear vulnerability.  Teach us to drink the wine and celebrate the weddings and weep with the mourners and feed the hungry and not overlook the hurting.  Open our eyes, Lord, to see Your goodness and Your grace all around us.  Teach us to number these evidences and give You thanks.  Teach us to follow thanks, like You did, with breaking - the breaking of our pride, of our own will, of our preconceptions and misconceptions, of our need for answers and a neat, tidy system of belief.  Teach us to walk by faith, to embrace the mystery of a God so much bigger than we can imagine, of a God who loves so much deeper than we can imagine.  Teach us to abandon the need for certainty and control for trust and surrender.  

We will face battles this week.  Let us take up the armor You provide.  We will face people in need.  Let Your Spirit fill us to overflowing, that we might be Your vessels.  We will face our own failures.  Let those send us running back to taste Your mercy on our lips.  We will face things we can never understand.  Let us trust in Your sovereignty.  Let us know that where we are weak, You are strong.  Let us know that where there is brokenness, Your glory will be displayed.  Let us know that this is not the end.  

Lord, open our hands - to give and to receive, to touch and to comfort.

Lord, open our hearts - to meet you, to love you, to meet others, to love others.

Lord, open our eyes - to see beauty, to see pain, to see You move in both.  

Lord, we want to be open, even though it makes us vulnerable.  We want to believe, even though the mystery of Your glory to to much for us to wrap our minds around.  We want You, even if that doesn't mean the life we imagine.  

Thy kingdom come, Father.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.  We are your beloved.  Thank you for being ours.  Amen.