A Prayer From the Divided Heart

Holy God, your law is holy, righteous and good, and we confess that we are not. We know what we want to do and we do not do it. We know what we hate and we do it anyway. We have made resolutions this week that are already broken and we bring the pieces to you.

We thank you that you do not ask us to pretend the war is over. You let your apostle write down his own cry, so that we would know the struggle is not strange and not final. We make his cry ours. What wretched people we are. Who will rescue us?

And we make his answer ours. Thanks be to you, who deliver us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Not a better method, not a stronger will, but a person. Let us stop reaching for the tool that only diagnoses and reach instead for the one who heals.

Give us today, in the middle of the fight, the joy of people who know how it ends. Amen.