Artist, Teach Us How To Pray
Artist, teach us how to pray.
Teach us how to pray slowly and wildly.
How to be childlike and unafraid in our need,
Clumsy with the chaos of our desires,
Yet eager to learn how to paint outside the lines,
to revel in uncontainable beauty --
its mystery, its transcendence,
its nearness --
spilling over the sides of our carefully-curated lives,
into every crack and corner,
Every valley, every heartbreak, every disappointment.
Teach us how to be human.
Artist, teach us how to pray.
To relearn a language both raw and hopeful,
Charged with persistent joy.
The kind of joy discovered through honesty --
The sadness and anger.
The kicking and screaming.
The things we're afraid to say.
The unshakeable longing for something better.
Invite us into the wider spaces,
Where madness submits to healing,
Where cynicism surrenders to hope,
Where we learn the songs of new creation.
Artist, teach us how to pray.
To slow down.
To attune our hearts.
To pay attention to the ordinary.
To feel the hum of shalom beneath our feet.
To listen to the groaning of all creation
And the groaning deep within us --
The ache that both haunts us and forms us.
Teach us how to wait,
To know that waiting is a posture of prayer,
The spirit moving in our restlessness and impatience,
And reassuring our hearts that
Redemption is coming.
Artist, lead us in prayer.
in the kind of faithfulness
That many call foolishness.
In the kind of courage
That is both terrifying and liberating.
The prayers of the humble,
The weary,
The messy,
The afraid,
The reckless,
The unfinished,
The loved,
The forgiven,
The joyful,
The hopeful.
