“What Happens Up There?” by Nancy E. Petty

Morning Prayer (3/17/2024)

Eternal God, who bids us when we pray to call you by your most intimate name, teach us to

remember, so that we do not waste our time struggling for words, when you know the very

depths of our souls from which our words would come.

You have emptied yourself, taking the form of a servant. But we are full of ourselves, and try

too hard to take the forms of a master. Teach us to be empty, so that we can be full.

Teach us to claim what we know is already ours, to be in closer union with You.

We see ourselves as our world bids us be seen: broken, unfinished, incomplete, imperfect. You

see us as you made us -- whole, finished, complete, perfect.

Not that we don’t have much to learn.

Not that we don’t have much to regret.

Not that we don’t have much for which to be forgiven,

Not that we don’t have much to forgive.

We look across our oceans to rivers of blood and pain and primal need. We ask your wisdom to

do our part to help the world find its moral anchor … as Muslims at Ramadan praying in the

rubble of their shattered mosque, as children starve in Gaza while caravans of food and

medicine are disabled and destroyed, as broken hostages in Palestine and the families who

grieve them look for hope and as they all struggle to claim their rights as full heirs of humanity.

Teach us what we can do.

Help us know how to forgive the unforgivable.

Help us to know how to love the unlovable.

Help us to know how to speak, to sing, to live a life that in its speaking, in its singing, in its living,

may cause every angry sword to be bent into a plowshare.

Strengthen those whose names we call this morning – our friends and theirs – sharing joys,

sharing grief, being in holy communion with each other, as you have willed us to be. Strengthen

those who suffer for the sake of conscience, and grant that your spirit may move every human

heart to bring to bear your will on earth as it is in heaven. And grant us your peace.

You have emptied yourself, taking the form of a servant. But we are full of ourselves, and try

too hard to take the forms of a master. Teach us to be empty, so that we can be full.

Amen

-Jim Jarrard