Friday Prayer

 

Loving God, Your ways are not our ways.  Your presence perplexes us.  What are humans that You are mindful and love us?  It doesn’t make sense, God.  And sometimes I can intellectually know Your love but close/lock the door of my heart to experiencing Your love or expressing Your love to someone else, because in the algebraic equation of my mind that other person doesn’t deserve it.  I pass by so many people physically and emotionally and digitally ~ we swim in a sea of humanity and so many people cry out from the ditches of life.  Our compassion can malfunction, and cynicism can roar to life, O God.  Help us.  Return us to the beautiful simplicity of the parable that calls us to love ~ not perfectly and maybe not in ways that will be recorded in some gospel ~ after all we don’t even know the Good Samaritan’s name!!  Perhaps we don’t need to have our name be remembered centuries from now.  Perhaps we don’t have to leave a digital footprint that will attract millions of likes and fill areas of adoring fans.  Perhaps what we need is to receive Your love, to hear anew and afresh Your truth that our first, middle, and last name is “Beloved”, and to let that truth loose in our lives in beautifully imperfect ways.  May this prayer make a difference to one person or tree or butterfly or snail or neighbor today.  May it be for days to come, O Love that will not let any of us go.  Amen.