SUNDAY MORNING PRAYER

ON PONDERING LAMENTS

We celebrate your steadfast love.
We praise you for your mercy.
We count on your faithfulness,
    We celebrate and
        praise and
        count on.

And then the world does not work right.
   We find ourselves unsafe and anxious,
    caught up in greed and selfishness,
    beset by a culture of violence and threat.

We wonder about the mismatch
     between you and our creation.

Mostly we trust,
     down deep we sometimes do not.
We risk truth-telling
     about your absence and silence and withdrawal.

We do such truth-telling,
    telling it to you,
  you...absent, silent, withdrawn.
  You we address, you, our only hope
     in this world and in the world to come.

Prayers for a Privileged People, Walter Brueggemann