A Prayer for Those Who Have Run Out of Words

God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, you heard your people when all they could do was groan. We come to you today with some of that same sound in us. There are burdens we carry that we have stopped describing, because describing them changed nothing. Hear them anyway. You have never needed our words to be well made.

Remember your covenant with us in Jesus Christ, not because you forget, but because we do. Turn toward your promises on our behalf. Look on those who labor under cruelty today, in prisons and workplaces and homes we will never see, and let your concern become action.

Keep us faithful in the long stretch before anything changes. Make us like the midwives, who feared you more than the powerful and did the small right thing. And when you send help, give us eyes to recognize it, even if it comes slowly and from the desert.

We ask this in the name of the one who came down to deliver us. Amen.