Metanoia

George Herbert: Man

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Since then, my God, thou hast

So brave a Palace built; O dwell in it,

That it may dwell with thee at last!

Till then, afford us so much wit;

That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee,

And both thy servants be.

-- George Herbert from "Man" in George Herbert: The Complete English Works

Fred Craddock: How to Begin Each Day

The great preacher, Fred Craddock, shared at a recent conference that, for more than thirty years, he has begun each day with the following prayer: 
 

Lord, thank you for giving me work to do that is more important than my feelings about it on any day. Amen.

William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas: Being a Christian is not natural....

 
Being a Christian is not natural, not a by-product of being an American.  To be Christian is to be adopted by a new nation, the kingdom of God.  For the first time in our lives, those old labels and divisions that cause such grief - male/female, slave/free, rich/poor, New Jersey/Texas - are washed away, overcome, not by saying that such divisions don't mean anything, but rather by showing how they have been relativized, subordinated, and washed by our new citizenship.  Now, the only division that makes much difference to us is church/world.

--William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas in Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer & the Christian Life

George Herbert: Prayer

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Of what an easy quick access,

My blessed Lord, art thou! how suddenly

May our requests thine ear invade!

To show that state dislikes not easiness.

If I but lift mine eyes, my suit is made:

Thou canst no more not hear, than thou canst die.

-- George Herbert, "Prayer (2)" in George Herbert: The Complete English Works

Stanley Hauerwas - Life is Sweet When We are in Love

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Loving Lord, where would we be without friends?  We would literally be no place.  Alone in your creation, yet unable to recognize it as creation.  It would be just another lonely place.  But you place us next to one another, and being so placed we are forced to recognize that others exist.  Bodies.  Attraction.  Recognition.  Friendship.  Love.  How wonderful and frightening.  We are not alone.  You created us passionate beings hungry for one another.  You want to make us your friends, and in that doing make us friends of one another and even ourselves.  Life is sweet when we are in love.  Praise you for giving us one another. Amen. -- Stanley Hauerwas in Prayers Plainly Spoken.

Walter Brueggemann: Against a closed sky....

We pray against a closed sky;

our hopes reduced to auto-suggestion;

our petitions are more habit than hopes;

our intercessions are kindly gestures of well-being.

Sometimes more, many times not,

because your silence and absence,

your indifference and tardiness are glaring among us.

We are drawn to lesser gods,

easier loyalties,

many forms of self-trust,

that do not even fool us....

We pray for new measures of passion,

for fresh waves of resolve,

for courage, energy, and freedom, to be our true selves...

waiting in confidence,

and while waiting, acting our life toward you

 
  your ways of forgiving generosity.

We pray in the name of Jesus who trusted fully, and

who is himself fully worthy of our trust.  Amen

-- Walter Brueggemann, from "Against a Closed Sky" in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth

 
 

Stanley Hauerwas: Living Confessions of Love

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Lord of all life, we come before you not knowing who we are.  We strut our stuff, trying to impress others with our self-confidence.  In the process we hope to be what we pretend.  Save us from such pretense, that we might learn who we are through trust in you to make us more than we can imagine.  Help us, Augustine-like, to reread our lives as confessions of sin made possible by your love.  Bind up our wounds and our joys so that our lives finally make sense only as a prayer to you. Amen. --Stanley Hauerwas in Prayers Plainly Spoken.

Stanley Hauerwas - Your Saints are a Funny Lot

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Mary-born Lord, humble us so that we also might say, "Let it be with me according to your word."  We are tempted to will our way to humility because we just do not trust you with creation.  Someone has to make this world come out right.  Thank you for surrounding us with your saints, whose lives remind us what your work looks like.  Your saints are such a funny lot - weird and wonderful.  They often make us laugh, Sarah - like, and through laughter we discover humility.  God, it is wonderful to be made part of your entertainment so that the world might be freed from sin. Amen. -- Stanley Hauerwas in Prayers Plainly Spoken