It can be a powerful practice to assert aloud who God is for us and what God has done for us. Today as you read these words from Walter Brueggemann you may want to say them aloud. Let them wash over you and settle within you, grounding you in the reality of all that God is and all that God does.
Holy God, to whom we turn in our trouble,
and from whom we receive life and well-being
even in the face of death;
Here we are now in the great congregation.
We come here to bear witness of you to our brothers and sisters;
We come here to bear witness because we cannot do otherwise;
We come here to hear the witness of our sisters and brothers,
without who witness we cannot live.
We gladly and without reservation assert:
You are the one who gives life;
You are the one who hears our prayers;
You are the one who turns our jungles of threat
into peaceable zones of life;
You are the one who has kept us since birth;
who stands by us in our failure and shame;
who moves against our anxiety to make us free.
You are the one who does not hide your face when we call.
So we praise you. We worship you. We adore you.
We yield our life over to you in glad thanksgiving.
As an act of praise, we submit our sick and our dead to you;
As an act of praise, we submit more and more
of our own life to you;
As an act of praise we notice your poor,
and pledge our energy on their behalf;
As an act of praise we say “yes” to you and to your rule over us.
We say “yes, yes,”
Amen and Amen.
May God’s blessing be upon you today,
Dianne
(Poem from: Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, Edited by Edwin Searcy, Fortress Press Minneapolis 2003. page 11.)
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