One way to pray through Lent

As we pray our way through Lent, the National Council of Churches has a tool for us on our journey; it’s a daily prayer devotional called Words Matter.

“Words Matter rests on the conviction that the words we choose to use really do matter. An initiative of the Justice for Women Working Group of the National Council of Churches, USA, Words Matter is not just about inclusive gender language or women’s issues, but stretches to address all boundaries where “us” meets “them.” Words Matter values relationship and storytelling, expansive rather than restricted language, cultural attentiveness, and an understanding of how words are tied to systems of power.”

Below is a prayer I wrote for this “expansive language” devotional.

Let us pray….

God of light and matter,

Gazing into fierce dark energy,

here on earth, not that which makes up space,

Gazing into all that darkness, spongy and close,

piecing out gravitational pulls on us, it’s time

to sort what makes and breaks us. Watching

for Doppler shift, in that vast vacuum, seeking

what brings light from so far away–why it comes

to us, here now, in the midst of our nighttime?

Seeking grace, and escape, like solar winds,

breaking loose to find that which is way out there,

while You? You reside within and among,

hard for us earthbound to grasp your incarnation,

Your presence housed in something akin to ours,

a body shared and broken in the midst of a vast vision

for humanity, while we seek comfort, and not the wide

expanse to which You call us, not the vastness to which

you whisper, “Come!”

As the earth circles the sun again this season,

as Lent sprawls out through this universe, hither

and yon, may it rest in me, may it remake me:

new energy, new matter, new purpose:

*To orbit Truth like a satellite, to remember

home, how far I’ve come, how far I have yet

to go.

*To remember the One whose voice

echoes through the light years, calling me,

and all.

*To recall what was noise to one, proved the origin

of the universe to another, in the story of static

and the cosmic microwave background.

*To sort sonance and sounds, to finally tune in to Your

“I am.”

Selah.

Prayers will be posted daily at www.wordsmatter.org,and you can sign up to receive them as daily emails at www.wordsmatter.org/lent-2012 One way to pray your way through Lent.