A prayer for God's coming
O Lord, it seems that we have always been looking for
you. Prophets told of your coming and psalmists sang of tyour future
arrival. The whole creation groans and wonders when you wilt show
yourself and right all wrongs. Your church herself wonders why thou are
taking so long to arrive. Sometimes (but only sometimes) we think that
even the evil doers of the world have moments when they wish you would
come and stop them in their evil tracks so that they will not plunge
deeper into the moral mire they love to wallow in.
Millions toil
only to have the wages of their honest labour cruelly snatched from them
and they weep bitter tears as they continue impossible tasks. Men sell
their body parts and even their children to stay alive and women are
forced into shame so families can eat a handful of rice. People ask for
bread and are given a stone while tyrants live in luxury and governments
reward violence. It’s been so long and still we haven’t seen you exalt
the humble and bring down the proud and arrogant. We have heard such
stories of you in olden days and we believe them, but we wonder why
there are none to tell today. We hear of them happening here and there
and we wonder why they don't happen everywhere. Forgive our impatience
but do please remember that it stems in part from your own established
righteousness and reputation and the promises you hast made. Still,
forgive us and help us to continue to believe that in Jesus Christ you
have vindicated yourself and will gloriously fulfill all your promises,
and that we will see and know it.
With sadness and some fear we
recognize that you might have come to us and gone away again—might have
come to us in disguise, perhaps as a child wanting to be loved, a woman
looking for justice or a man wearily and in some irritation looking for
his soul. Perhaps we were too busy praying for thy coming that we had no
time for you. We implore you not to leave us this way but to return to
us. And when you do finally come to us without disguise may you find us
busy responding compassionately to you in your many disguises. O come to
our aid, we pray, though we are a wicked and wayward human family for
there is so much pain and suffering and loss and there is no help beside
you.