this is just a great prayer from wild goose worship group (you can find it in there advent, christmas and epiphany book Cloth for the Cradle, 1997). I used it at advent explorations last night.
Open our eyes, Lord
especially if they are half-shut
because we are tired of looking
or half-open
because we fear to see too much
or bleared with tears
because yesterday and today and tomorrow
are filled with the same pain
or contracted
because we only look at what we want to see
Open our eyes, Lord
to gently scan the life we lead
The home we have
The world we inhabit
and so to find
among the gremlins and the greyness
signs of hope we can fasten on and encourage
Give us, whose eyes are dimmed by familiarity
a bigger vision of what you can do
even with hopeless causes and lost causes
and people of limited ability
Show us the world as in your sight
riddled by debt, deceit and disbelief
yet also
shot through with possibility
for recovery, renewal, redemption
And lest we fail to distinguish vision from fantasy,
today, tomorrow, this week,
open our eyes to one person
or one place
where we – being even for a moment prophetic – might identify
and wean a potential in the waiting
And with all this,
open our eyes, in yearning, for Jesus
On the mountains
in the cities
through the corridors of power
and streets of despair
to help, to heal
to confront, to convert
O come, o come, Immanuel
1 comment:
all the people waited in jerusalem for messiah to appear at the temple, the seat of religious power, yet he came to some shepherds, part of the peasant class
why do we still seek him in the power houses of the religious
like it says 'open our eyes' Lord so we don't stumble blindly
'better to be lost in finding him than be found in losing him'
unknown carmelite hermit 1253AD Sicily
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