a prayer after psalm 145

Lord, the psalmist has called our attention to our own sin.

He says that you are faithful in all your words, and gracious in all your deeds,
but we are faithless in word and ungracious in deed.
We’re afraid of the consequences of the truth,
so we lie to our parents, our spouses, ourselves.
We reduce reality to slogans, we prefer sound bites to nuanced conversation,
we spin the story.
And not only is our speech inhospitable, but so are our actions.
We busy ourselves with meaningless things
and make no room for friends over a shared meal.
We cut people off, we ignore them, we don’t invite them into conversation.
We are self-absorbed and self-preserving people.
God of grace, forgive us.

You uphold all who are falling,
but we let people down.
We are so self-interested that we forget what repercussions our actions have.
Worried about the tasks of our own day,
we do not pick up the house or do the dishes for our spouses,
we do not come to our children’s baseball games,
we forget to visit a friend.
We hurt the people we love the most.
God of grace, forgive us.

You raise up all who are bowed down,
but we don’t even notice them.
We forget about people with more needs than we have.
We don’t pay attention to the people who
make our clothes or
grow our food or
assemble our calculators and appliances and toys.
We let them slip through the cracks.
God of grace, forgive us.

You give everyone their food in due season,
but we, out of fear or greed, keep our things to ourselves.
When we have enough, we’re afraid of losing it.
When we have little, we think we can’t afford to give it up.
And when we share, we share on our own terms,
believing that we know how to balance our checkbooks better than you do.
God of grace, forgive us.

Lord, the eyes of all look to you,
and so we look to you, confessing our sin and asking for your forgiveness.

Amen.

Tags: confession, faith, hospitality, psalms

• July 22, 2012
• Prayers, Whidbey
• 3 Comments