Delivered

In gratitude for mercy, in repentance for blindness, in hope for the One thing necessary

“I love the Lord, for he has heard the cry of my appeal;

for he turned his ear to me in the day when I called him.”

Psalm 116:1 Grail Translation

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I love You, O Lord, because You have heard me.

You have heard me when I did not even know how to pray.

You have heard me when my prayer was nothing but exhaustion, nothing but confusion, nothing but silence.

You have heard the cry that never reached my lips but lived buried in the depths of my heart.

“The snares of death encompassed me; the pains of hell took hold of me; by grief and sorrow I was overcome.”

Yet You did not turn Your face away.

You came near.

You entered into the narrowness of my heart, into the affliction I could not escape, into the poverty I could not conceal from myself.

“The Lord is compassion and love, and our God is mercy.”

Not because I was faithful.

Not because I was strong.

Not because I was worthy.

But because You are mercy.

Because mercy is what You are.

This day, O Lord, I rise because You have sustained me.

You have delivered my soul from death,

my eyes from tears,

my feet from stumbling.

You have allowed me to walk again before You in the land of the living, though I know how easily I wander, how quickly I forget, how instinctively I turn back toward myself.

And so I ask You now for the only thing necessary.

Give me Yourself.

Strip from me the illusion that anything else can give life.

Strip from me the hidden resentments that poison the heart.

Strip from me the silent accusations I carry against others and against myself.

Cleanse me, O Lord, of the hardness that I defend as righteousness.

Cleanse me of the pride that disguises itself as knowledge.

Cleanse me of the fragile ego that wounds others while seeking to preserve itself.

I confess before You my poverty.

“I trusted, even when I said: I am sorely afflicted.”

I see now how often my affliction became self-defense instead of surrender.

How often my wounds became justification instead of repentance.

How often I spoke, acted, or withdrew not from love, but from fear of losing myself.

Yet You did not abandon me.

You waited.

You preserved my life even when I did not know how to live it.

You allowed me to see, slowly and painfully, that I am nothing without You.

That I have nothing without You.

That I am sustained by mercy alone.

And so this day I place myself before You again.

Let me seek the One thing necessary.

Let me not scatter myself in distractions that promise relief but leave the heart empty.

Let me not seek consolation apart from Your presence.

Let me not live outwardly while dying inwardly.

Teach me to serve humbly and simply.

Let me embrace the small tasks given to me today as holy.

Let me receive interruptions without resistance.

Let me carry the burdens entrusted to me without complaint.

Let my service be hidden.

Let my prayer be hidden.

Let my life be hidden with Christ in You.

Restore joy to my heart, not the joy that comes from ease, but the joy that comes from belonging to You.

Restore hope to my heart, not hope in outcomes, but hope in Your mercy.

Restore repentance to my heart, not as shame, but as truth.

Let me walk before You in the land of the living this day.

Let me walk slowly.

Let me walk attentively.

Let me walk in remembrance.

“What return can I make to the Lord for all he has given to me?”

I offer You this day.

I offer You my weakness.

I offer You my poverty.

I offer You my failures and my hope.

Receive me, O Lord.

Preserve me.

Teach me to love You.

For You have heard the cry of my appeal.

And I am alive because of Your mercy.

Amen.