A Prayer Against a Hard Heart

LORD, there is no one like you. You send and you remove, you name the hour and keep it, and you draw a line through the darkness so that your people have light. We praise you for that this morning, before the week has had a chance to make us forget.

We confess that we are more like Pharaoh than we want to admit. We seek you when the frogs are in the bed and forget you when the land is quiet. We bargain for a smaller obedience, offering you part of ourselves and keeping the rest. We have felt relief and used it as permission to drift.

Soften what we have hardened. Do not let us go on refusing until refusing becomes who we are. Give us the honesty of Moses, who asked you for exact things and expected you to act, and the steadiness to walk out of Egypt entirely, with everything we have, rather than negotiating a partial exit.

Make your name known through us today, in whatever small way you choose. Amen.