Imperfect Prayers

When imperfect people pray God listens. We don't have to memorize rituals and perform them flawlessly. We just open our heaped up, conflicted, imperfect hearts and lean into Him the way my son used to lean his weight against me when he was small and church had run long.

Our praise of Him may be like those pictures that adorn the refrigerator where Daddy is drawn with a big circle for a head, a missing body and the wrong number of fingers but someone so loved them as to put them on display.

We are precious and loved and therefore welcomed by every gesture, by every word in which our open-hearted God has revealed Himself.

Approach Him today. You can't fail to get it right. Christ has already done that for you. Just lean in.

-John LaMantia

 

You hear our prayers whether
they are full of thanksgiving
or full of complaints.
Your mercy is unending.
Even in your discipline
you restrain yourself
in ways we cannot know.
May our mumbled words of gratitude
and our fleeting praises
find crevices where they can grow
within your presence,
Lord of light and morning.
Amen.

Prayer from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Claiborne/Wilson-Hartgrove).