Prayer for the Fortieth Day of Lent—7 April 2012 · 7 April 2012

Hi God,

Well, it seems I made it.
No reason for pride,
you know something’s amiss
when the voices in your head
must hector you, relentlessly,
to write a f**g prayer.
Tough to believe that You much care
when it gets to that point.
The voices in my head must care
because of their constant hectoring,
but they are rather tight lipped
when it comes to explaining
the point of all this.

RLP said his Lenten Writing Discipline
helped him recapture something within himself.
Sorry, that didn’t seem to happen to me.
Neither did I feel the exercise
brought me closer to You.
It felt more like slogging through mud,
but for no apparent reason.

So my prayer today
is one of thanksgiving
that this seemingly futile exercise
can now cease,
that I can now hit the hay
rather than stay up late
writing a stupid prayer.

I also ask You, please,
to have mercy on my soul,
somewhat negative sinner though I be.

Amen

— lgpiper

Comment [3]

Prayer for the Thirty-Ninth Day of Lent—6 April 2012 · 6 April 2012

Hi God,

It seems ironic to me
that on Good Friday,
a day we commemorate death,
a rather unjust death at that,
that new life dominates our thoughts,
new life born into a place and time,
where injustice fights for the upper hand.
Despite external conditions,
at all times and in all places
some are born to new life
while others cease to live.
It has been ever so.

So my prayer today
is to be reminded of the hope
new life brings to us all;
also to ask that injustice,
eternally striving to exterminate us all,
not mire us down in hopelessness.
I pray that this hope sustain us
so we can provide a better world
for the newcomers and also
for those yet to come.

I also ask You, please,
to have mercy on my soul,
hopeless sinner though I be.

Amen

— lgpiper

Comment

Prayer for the Thirty-Eighth Day of Lent—5 April 2012 · 5 April 2012

Hi God,

We’ve been told that
“To everything there is a season”.
Some might even make the claim
that You are the one who told us that,
and also that You are the one
who sets the seasons for everything.
Whatever, it seems to some of us
that some creatures depart early;
some others, it seems, arrive early,
imperiling, perhaps, those charged
with their pre-arrival care.

So my prayer today
is to ask You to help us remember
how blessed we were
in having shared our lives
with the early departures,
and how blessed we are likely to be
sharing lives with the early arrivals,
but also please remind us
how important it is that we all
provide care for the caretakers.

I also ask You, please,
to have mercy on my soul
sinner though I surely be.

Amen

— lgpiper

Comment

Prayer for the Thirty-Seventh Day of Lent—4 April 2012 · 4 April 2012

Hi God,

I recently read an article that asked
whether or not Roman Catholics
were real, true Christians.
The article seemed to think
that they could be, but most probably were not.
To be fair, the writer seemed to think
most Protestants also probably were not.

It seems a silly subject to me,
not much different from the Jim Crow claims
that black people aren’t real, true humans,
or the claim of some Communists
that other professing Communists
weren’t real, true Communists,
consider for example, the Trotskyites.

Seems to me that we should all
be working on finding how we’re the same,
not building barriers to segregate groups,
some of whom are in, others, not in.

So my prayer today
is to ask You to knock some sense into us,
to help us see our commonality,
so we can all live together in community.
Perhaps an upside of this
is we’d stop killing each other.
One would think the Creator of All
would look kindly on our curbing
our anti-creative instincts.

Also, I ask You please,
to have mercy on my soul,
segregating sinner though I be.

Amen

— lgpiper

Comment

Prayer for the Thirty-Sixth Day of Lent—3 April 2012 · 3 April 2012

Hi God,

Well, we did have a lovely morning walk,
enhanced greatly by the presence
of a cardinal, singing his heart out
high up in one of the trees.
Eventually, I even found him,
despite having these crappy eyes,
eyes whose crappiness
the optician confirmed
later in the day.

So, in a way, we have
at least two blessings today:
the cardinal in the morning,
and the fact that I live in a time
when one can fix crappy eyes
with a scalpel and a piece of plastic.
With luck, we’ll have a third,
though we won’t know until tomorrow:
the boeuf bourguignon I made today,
albeit too late for dinner,
smells like it won’t suck.
We’ll find out tomorrow tomorrow.
Then too, I suppose it’s also a blessing
that we had leftover pork curry,
that didn’t suck in the least,
to provide us something to eat
before bed time, which would be the time
the boeuf bourguignon would be ready.

So, I suppose my prayer today
is that You help us
remain mindful of our blessings,
no matter trivial they might seem.

Also, I ask You, please,
to have mercy on my soul,
unmindful sinner though I be.

Amen

— lgpiper

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