Dear God,
please untie the knots
that are in my mind,
my heart and my life.
Remove the have nots,
the can nots and the do nots
that I have in my mind.
Erase the will nots,
may nots, and
might nots that find
a home in my heart.
Release me from the could nots,
would nots and
should nots that obstruct my life.
And most of all, dear God,
I ask that you remove from my mind
my heart and my life all of the am nots
that I have allowed to hold me back,
especially the thought
that I am not good enough.
Amen.
(author known to God)
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
Attributed – Sir Francis Drake -1577
I was driving down the road and enjoying the return of color to the trees, grasses and flowers, the visual heralding of spring's return. And then I was thinking about all the colors in God's creation, which somehow led me to thoughts about the color of prayer (something that I had never thought of). Before you think I am totally crazy, let me explain.
Prayers come in different types and we pray for different reasons. I am basically a visually oriented person, so it helps me to visualize ideas and concepts. Seeing color in prayer is just another way of visualizing the idea and concept of prayer.
I believe that some prayers are yellow and bright orange. These are the prayers of joy and praise much like Psalm 100 and Psalm 150. Some prayers are light blue as in balance of plea and praise fo Psalm 73. Some are shades of green – I think Psalm 23 fits this best. Then there are the reds – angry and loud as the voices heard in Psalm 83 and 137. Some prayers are dark blue and purple like the cries heard in Psalm 102.
There are the prayers that are gray – the clouds of despair are present but praise is still heard as in Psalm 130 – and there are the prayers that are black like the prayer found in Psalm 22 (and even it ends in praise). Prayers are even white or a mix of colors – Psalm 119 covers a lot of territory and colors in my mind.
The Psalms are a collection of prayers (and more) and come in many colors as you see. I think God gave that to us in His Word so that we can see that our prayers come in different forms and speak of different feelings and emotions and they are all okay because God is interested in every part of our being.
So, what color is your prayer?
Be well,
Steve
Translator
