Most Holy Judge:
for what we plainly know
but cannot bring ourselves to confront,
forgive us and be merciful to those harmed by the fallout.
The truth does not need prophets yet you send them anyway,
each one an invitation to understand and repent,
to make way for what is needed.
But we say: be silent.
If you do not speak, O God,
it is because we have refused to learn.
Worse: we have substituted your voice for our vanity,
saying, “Here is all we know, and beyond it there is nothing.”
The arguments we cling to at the expense of one another,
the hells we walk through to avoid being guilty,
the grief in which we plant our identity:
each one stubbornly silencing.
“Yes, I know. Keep silent,”
and you do, leaving us in the whirlwind’s dust
to wonder whether the fires of heaven are your judgment or
your grace to weld back together every truth we have wrenched apart.
on 2 Kings 2:1-12
The Rev. Rachel G. Hackenberg‘s book with Martha Spong, Denial Is My Spiritual Practice (and Other Failures of Faith), searches for faith through life’s trials. Rachel has also written Writing to God, a popular Lenten devotional, and other books.
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2 thoughts on “Sunday Prayer: Stubborn”