Sometimes in the blink of an eye everything changes. Such is the case with this blog post. I am posting later than I usually do and it hasn’t gone through my usual editing streams, instead after feeling silenced all weekend, I am going to share with you a raw personal prayer.

When life is dark and I feel unsure it is the only thing I know to do… to pray… and though it feels like not enough- I pray anyway-

I pray because God tells me to, and because as I read the Psalms of lament I know that this is what we have always done. We have leaned into the places where it is hardest to trust- and we have asked God why?

 

Dear Lord,

I want to begin by confessing that I am having trouble seeing you-

As I listen to the news and see images flash across screens

all I can think is where were you?

 

Where were you when gunfire rang out and bombs exploded?

Where were you when fear overcame the people,

and a Friday night turned into the scene of a crime?

Where were you when one country’s devastation becomes the fixation of all of us yet other’s only make the news when we lose “one of our own”?

Where are you for the countless people who fleeing their own country are forced to leave all they know and flock to countries that don’t want them?

Where are you when the news is filled with dirty starving faces, but our politicians debate and bicker over who can build the biggest wall?

Where are you when yet another mass grave is found?

 

Lord I confess in my own life I am having trouble seeing you

 

Where are you when I have no words to share

with the people you have called me to?

Where are you when people critique me

and I feel so small and your message so big?

Where are you when my heart is lonely and I feel afraid

that who you made me to be isn’t enough?

Where are you when people I love can’t seem to get along

and I feel caught in the middle?

 

Where are you?

 

But, O God you are there just beyond my comprehension

 

Slowing me down letting me grieve and then becoming visible in…

The strangers who rescued each other

In the faces on the news of people who refuse

to let those who would divide us make us xenophobic

A friend’s deep hug and words of encouragement

In moments where I know my words are not my own but yours

In the Love that I see sprouting up like a defiant flower in a cracked

sidewalk

In the hopeful faces of the family of the little boy

that got baptized this Sunday

In the moments where I redefine enemy and start to live out

my belief that love truly wins-

Where are you? You are where you have always been

Deuteronomy 31:6

Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord

your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.’