To one who hurts

Not sure how to explain this. I have had several friends suffering this week, one in particular very close to my heart. Sometimes I don't even know how to pray for them, simply hurt for them. But I believe that I can join my inadequate, broken love to the perfect love of God for them, until my longing for their healing, given back to Him, becomes a prayer for them (I'm struggling for words here)..

This my love
Reaches blindly
To enclose you in my soul
To shelter you from the sun by day
And the moon by night.
To stretch beyond my limitations
And hold your heart secure.

This I cannot do.
In my human smallness
In my broken wisdom
How can I contain your mystery?

I would carry pain for you
Heartbeat by heartbeat
Measuring your pace
Breath for breath enduring
In this tense and aching silence ..
Would you even know?

Pain cannot be divided
For my power is as zero.

But I will take this longing
And become a prayer
Seeing Perfect Love once more
Nailed to our agony.
I will nail my soul to Him
To His dereliction binding;
Letting grace flow through
The tatters of my straining
As He holds the world,
And you;
Healing in His wounds.

Prayer from an Old Diary

Cleaning out some old papers I came across a prayer diary I kept for a while in 1991, when I was dealing with some pretty heavy stuff in my life. Skimming through it I came across this (edited slightly for context):


Quicken Your Spirit within me, my Father, that Your transforming power might be at work in me, even in this impossible situation.

In the midst of turmoil, saturate me with Your peace
In the midst of my pain, be a wellspring of joy within me
In the midst of rejection, let me rest upon Your love
In the midst of injustice, make me steadfast in longsuffering
In the midst of provocation, keep me gentle
In the midst of change and confusion, hold me in Your faithfulness
In the midst of evil, let me be a channel of Your goodness
In the midst of persecution, help me be glad in meekness
In the midst of passion and self-indulgence, temper me with the Spirit’s fruit of self-control.

I am not these things, but You are, and there is my sufficiency.
To look for fulfilment in any other place is frustration and futility.

Not my way ..

Lead me through darkness, for my way is known to You.
You have counted the hairs on my head and the sands of time,
Seen the end from the beginning, and adorned each brittle flower.

My ways are not Your ways, but I how would they were,
That love, like the alchemist’s stone, would touch my leaden heart,
Transmuting it to malleable gold.

My ways lead to futility, I cannot what I would.
In me dwells no good thing, except You dwell in me,
Then am I satisfied, for I shall wake up in Your likeness.

I am a child, Your child, still small in incompleteness
I must lean on You and learn, for You are my only wisdom,
My way, my Truth, my Life, Yourself my whole fulfilment.

So, not my way, but Yours; there is my hope, my freedom,
In the centre of Your will, where mystery turns to meaning,
In my heart’s most hidden place, continue Your redeeming.

Thanks -giving

One good custom Americans have which we missed out on, because of the vast differences in the history of our national beginnings, is the celebration of Thanksgiving. But, since all of us, everywhere are commanded to "give thanks in everything, I thought I'd have a go at scratching the surface ..

For these I give You thanks my Lord, my Maker and Sustainer,
At the turning of the year, and the ending of the season,
With the lifting of my heart, the submission of my reason,
I give thanks.

For the unexpected sunlight, the shaft that pierces darkness,
The stars in silver clarity, the mystery of shadow,
The lorikeets in rainbow hues, piercing as an arrow,
Summer rain.

For trees that dance against the sky, and flowers dressed in wonder,
The green curve of a wave, the enormity of storm,
The blessedness of bread, the dew upon the lawn,
Pelicans.

For unexpected hugs, and gentle words of healing
The clasp of hands, the smiles of friends, the deep embrace of prayer,
For shelter and for cosiness, Christ’s beauty everywhere,
Lovely light.

For life in You that has no end, the comfort of Your promise,
The certainty that stays my days, forgiveness past my guessing,
One cross to answer all I am with overwhelming blessing,
I give thanks.

Something on prayer

I have just joined a new forum for Aussie Christians, and I was asked to post something on prayer. This is what came to mind:

I was asked to write something about prayer, which is a huge topic (and I don’t know what sort of thing you had in mind!)

So what came to mind was the simplicity of prayer. I have a growing conviction that we make prayer a lot more complicated than the bible does. When I look at some significant answers to prayer in my own life, none of those prayers had anything ‘magic’ about it, Ever noticed how, when you’re seriously engaged on some issue, techniques and other people’s systems tend to get thrown overboard?

I think it is significant that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray they didn’t get a lecture on developing more impressive faith or get shown some deep doctrinal secret, they got given a model prayer whose most outstanding characteristic is its .. simplicity! What do we find here?

# an acknowledgement that we come in prayer to a father who loves us
# He is holy, and He is about the business of His kingdom, and expects us to want that too – our values in prayer should be kingdom values
# We can bring Him all our human needs (daily bread) we don’t have deny our humanity or spiritualise everything. He knows what we are and he knows how needy we are (do we?)
# we always need forgiveness (and we are never so messed up that we can’t ask for it)
# we need His protection

I think the heart of prayer is nakedness – to seek God in that way is to take off all our pretenses and simply be our needy selves before him.
If there’s a second principle it is to let our prayer be Spirit-led. Half the time we don’t even know how to pray for the things that are most important to us .. so why not acknowledge that as part of our neediness and let Him teach us that too?

Tonight -- a prayer

Tonight I will rest on Your peace. I will not tear myself to shreds in the desperate search to find some value, some justification, for my own existence. I will choose to believe that You love me anyway.

Tonight I will let You love me. I will not dwell on the ones who failed to love, who lured my soul with the promise of friendship, only to mock and reject me when they had backed me into a corner where I admitted that their goodwill mattered to me. I will choose to believe that Your love is real.

Tonight I will entrust my heart to you. I know it isn’t worth much, it’s so pathetically self-centred, and fearful, and it’s been broken so many times that the sticky tape of my willpower can barely hold it together. Yet I believe You want it anyway.

Tonight I will share my dreams with You. They’re so secret I don’t tell anyone else, I know they’d only laugh. But You made rainbows and stars, and the lift of a bird’s wing against the sunset, You know why You made me me, and one day You will teach me how to fly. I want to know what Your dream is for me, to catch a glimpse of the possibility that will become in that place where Your grace makes these incongruities graceful.

Tonight I will trust that You really mean it when You say that You forgive me, that there’s no secret hoop You’re waiting for me to jump through before You take me in Your arms. I do not need to keep struggling with my shame, You bore it all and have borne it away for me.

Tonight I will not be afraid of all the holes in human love, even if I fall through them, I cannot fall out of Your hands. You always understand, even when I cannot understand myself. I will never understand You, but I know that I love You: feebly and foolishly, but that doesn’t matter, because it is so real, You are my only life. And You call forth this tremulous love, because You first loved me.

Tonight I will remember that every promise is Yes and amen in You.