Prayer

 Dear Heavenly Father

You know the names of each and every person who has ever existed,

who exists now, and who will ever exist.

Such knowledge is so difficult for me to comprehend.

What is even more difficult to understand

is that you love each and every person behind the names.

Thank you that I am one of the names that you know,

one of the people you love.

I feel so privileged to have a part to play in the larger story of salvation.

However small a part, Lord help me to realise that it isn't insignificant.

How many people are in paradise today because of one line spoken by a thief 

on a cross/

Give me the strength to say my lines with grace and dignity

so a wonderous play can go on

and so paradise might be fuller

because I played my part, said my lines, and exited quietly.

Thank you for my name.

As I say it aloud, whisper to me what you think of the person who bears it...

Eugene H. Peterson


Share My Bread



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hopeful Waiting

Image
 Waiting is an activity with impressive documentation throughout Scripture, yet it's astonishingly ignored in most constructs of how to live the Christian life. Waiting isn't a passive occupation but an active and hopeful orientation toward the activity of God for which there's no present evidence. Refusal to wait is a refusal to trust. Paul never counselled passivity or quietism. He did, however, commend the hopeful waiting that expects Christ to save the day-not only in the Second Coming but also in all the daily comings where he shows up in our lives, offering salvation from one kind of doom or another, whether a doomed marriage or a dommed business or simply a doomed attitude. Eugene H. Peterson I Speak Jesus  
Read more

A David Psalm, when he outwitted Abimelech and got away. (Psalm 34)

Image
I bless God every chance I get; my lungs expand with his praise. I live and breathe God; if things aren't going well, hear this and be happy: Join me in spreading the news; together let's get the word out. God met me more than halfway, and freed me from my anxious fears. Look at him; give him your warmest smile. Never hide your feelings from him. When I was desperate, I called out, and God got me out of a tight spot. God's angels set up a circle of protection around us while we pray. Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him. Worship God if you want the best; Worship opens doors to all his goodness. Eugene H. Peterson, Do you think of the Christian life as something that lifts you out of the realm of the mundane into something more majestic? If so, you're wishing in the wrong direction. The Christian faith draws us deeper into the stuff of creation: bodies, money, emotions,  and relationships. Some of the stuff we ...
Read more

I Speak Jesus

Image
 Besides affecting our eternal salvation, Christ's crucifixion affects us every  day of our lives. God's way of being among us is to get down to our level, to enter the humiliation of death, to share the persecution and the pain, to  get into our skin and go through these things with us. It's impossible to take the truth of the gospel and divorce it from the way of the gospel. We're not allowed to pick and choose among the truths of the Bible and not make up a private anthology of comforting sayings. Jesus is the Way as well as the Truth. And the way is crucifixion. Suffering is part of that reality. It's comforting to know I can get beneath God. Wherever I am, however low I get, he has been there and is with me there and longing for fellowship with me there. Eugene H. Peterson Turn Up The Volume
Read more