Our Father,
Here we are, sitting in prayer. Sitting more or less quietly, our hearts turned more or less to you. Each of us has come from our separate home, leaving behind a different morning and a different week to meet here together and praise you, more or less.
LORD, it is a simple thing to bow our heads and close our eyes, but how much harder to quieten our monkey minds and still our souls before you. We close our eyes to the distractions of the world around us, but how can we hide from the distractions that well up within us?
Here we are, our Father, meeting together to sit in your presence, to hear and know that you alone are God, but instead we find ourselves absorbed in our quarrels and complaints. We come to pray, but when we close our eyes we are once again rehearsing that argument and what we’ll say next time. We are nursing that anger and resentment, or we are unable to lift our heads above the loneliness or heartbreak or fear we are in. Or we are just so busy with so many urgent demands on our time, we hardly know anymore how to be still and rest in you.
All of this you know, our Father. How lovingly you call us your children, for all our whining and neediness; how affectionately you call us your sheep, for all our bleating and useless wandering. We can’t hide from you the smallness of our thoughts or the power of our worries to consume us, so instead we will bring them to you as worship.
Our Father, here we are — ready to praise you in our littleness, understanding just a little, more or less, how great and unswerving your love must be to cover such swerving creatures. How awesome your power to save, that you rescue not only the wise and brave and righteous, but also the foolish and quavering and wicked. How vast and unquenchable your glory that you are not ashamed to make us in your image, not embarrassed to be known through our staggering efforts.
Father, for this next hour or so together — for this tiny window of passing time — we pray that we might know what eternal matters we are paddling in. Squirming on these wooden pews, more or less focused, more or less engaged with this prayer — we are yet standing in your throne room. All of heaven has fallen silent, the angels have paused in their singing, and the LORD God of the universe is listening because, by the power of the Holy Spirit, at the invitation of the slain and risen Christ, we little sheep are calling out to you, ‘Here we are, LORD; here we are.’
Not by merit, not by our own goodness or works, but by the loving gift of Jesus himself, to whose glory we offer ourselves to you again, our Father,
Here we are, Amen.
Rowan McAuley 