A Prayer of Love

 

A Prayer for Love to the Lord of Love

Art: "God the Father" by Cima da Conegliano, circa, 1515
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I am weak, Lord.

I am lowly.

I bring nothing in my hands. I offer no credentials, no reputation, no resume worth reading.

My track record is checkered. My focus is scattered. My mind is here and there and everywhere. I am easily distracted and frequently tested to the core.

Yet, God, you are my God.

Yet, God, you love me, value me, invest in me, and show grace and mercy to me daily.

I am unworthy. You are worthy.

All my value is that you regard me.

Why, oh why?

It does not matter why because You are the Why of all things and of my existence and You have engraved Your love into the fabric of the universe.

Your love, Oh LORD, is the only true reality, standard, and truth that bleeds through all of our opinions about ourselves and others.

Your wrath is against all that is not love. Why then, if I am not judged, can I ever stand in judgment against my neighbor?

I shall not.

He and she are Yours. You see in them that which is precious even as You see something precious in me.

Give me glimpses today of the wonder in my neighbors eyes and the love in his or her heart that I may view my neighbor through the lenses of Your redemptive and reconciling grace and lay all of my prejudices and agendas aside.

And may my neighbor join me in this cause and his neighbor and her neighbor.

I pray this, as the only solution to our divisions in the Name of Jesus who divided us in order to unite us, who showed us hard truth in order to reconcile us to Himself and to one another, who bore all pain, sin, and alienation upon Himself in order to introduce us to You as Your long lost children who have come home.

Give us the heart of the prodigal's father.

Give us Your heart and the heart of Jesus, Your Son. Amen.