Prayer for Wisdom, Courage, and Humility
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Dear church family, this is the prayer I delivered on 14 November. Many of you complimented me on it and told me it was meaningful, so I am making it available here.
Yours,
Paul
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God of shortening days, cooling air, and slanting light, we come before you today aware of the limitations of life. The pandemic has robbed us of so much. Our societal and environmental ills threaten to overwhelm us. The emotional challenges of life keep us up at night. Our physical health is subject every day to ten thousand diseases. And now the nights are growing long.
In the face of such limits we find it easy, in the economy of this world, to feel inadequate. A thousand ads a day promise more and better. Around us we see those who we think have more money than we do, those who have more children than we do, and those with better vacations or better health or better marriages or better jobs or more leisure time. And we feel inadequate. We find ourselves afraid to part with even a little of our money. We find ourselves afraid to give away an hour of our time. We are afraid of sharing anything true of ourselves. Our souls grow weary of the treadmill. Our souls shrink from the economy of more and better.
We have heard stories of another economy, your economy, in which one person’s gain is not another’s loss, in which you can only keep what you give away, in which generosity, and not competition, drives everything. We long to be part of that economy, to be free and generous, to be unafraid of losing what we give away. We long to give.
Grant us the wisdom, we pray, to see through the lies that keep us in fear. Grant us courage, we pray, to act generously in the face of perceived limitations. Grant us the humility to trust in things not seen, to give what little we have so that it may, like loaves and fishes, multiply and multiply again and propagate through the lives of our families, our church, our neighborhoods, our city, and the world. And grant us the humility to receive with gratitude and joy what others freely give us.
Paul Wallace
Pastor for Adult Education