Lord of Life and Light,
help us not to fall in love
with the darkness that separates us
from you and from each other,
but to watch large-eyed, wide-hearted,
open-handed, eager-minded for you,
to dream and
hunger and squint and pray
for the light of you and life for each other.
Lord, amidst our white-knuckled,
furrow-faced busy-ness in this season,
we realize deep within us that your
gifts
of mercy and
light, peace and joy, grace upon grace
can be received only if we are unclenched open.
So this is our prayer, Lord: Open us!
Gentle us open, pry, shock, tickle, beguile, knock,
amaze, squeeze, any wily way you can
us open.
Open us to see your glory
in the coming again of the light of each day,
the light in babies'
eyes and lovers' smiles,
the light in
the glaze of weariness that causes us to pause,
the light of truth wherever spoken and done.
Open us to songs of angels in the thumping of traffic,
in the rustle of shoppers, the canopy of pre-dawn silence,
in the hum of hope, the wail of
longing within us,
in the cries
of our brothers and sisters for justice and peace,
and in our own souls' throb
toward goodness.
Open us, then, to share the gifts you have given us
and to the deep yearning to share them gladly and boldly,
to sweat for justice, to pay the cost
of attention,
to initiate
the exchange of forgiveness,
to
risk a new beginning free of past grievances,
to engage with each other in the potluck of joy
and to find the gifts of a larger love and deeper peace.
Open us, Lord of miracles of the ordinary,
to the breath-giving, heart-pounding wonder of birth,
a mother's
fierce love, a father's
tender fidelities,
a baby's
barricade-dissolving burble and squeak,
that we may be born anew ourselves
into the "don't
be afraid" fullness of your
image,
the fullness
of a just and joyful human community,
the fullness of your kingdom,
in the fullness of your time;
through the eternal grace of
your son, our brother Jesus.
Amen.
Excerpts from MY HEART IN MY MOUTH: PRAYERS FOR OUR LIVES by Ted Loder. Copyright (c) 2000 by Ted Loder. Reprinted by permission of Innisfree Press.
Ted 's imaginative leadership --- described as a breath of fresh air --- led the First United Methodist Church of Germantown (Philadelphia), Pennsylvania in a refreshing openness to hard questions, to change, and to justice for almost 40 years.