Turn Your Spirit Loose

A prayer by Ted Loder

For all who, like me, struggle daily with the edges of fear and live with wild imaginations of the good and the evil that could befall us, but who persistently and desperately continue to give ourselves to the steadfastness of Christ by the grace of Christ.

Turn Your Spirit Loose

O God, turn your Spirit loose now,
and me with it,
that I may go to where the edge is
to face with you the shape of my mortality:
the inescapable struggle and loneliness and pain
which remind me
that I am less than god after all,
that you have made me with hard limits,
limits to my strength,
my knowledge,
my days.

Facing those limits, Lord,
grant me grace
to live to the limit
of being unflinchingly alive,
irrepressibly alive,
fully alive,
of experiencing
every fragile,
miraculous,
bloody,
juicy,
aching,
beautiful ounce
of being a human being;
of doing my duty
and a little more;
of loving the people around me,
my friends and my enemies;
of humbling myself to take others seriously
and delightedly;
of applying my heart to the wisdom of simplicity,
the freedom of honesty.

O God, turn your Spirit loose here,
and me with it,
that I may go to where the silence is
to face with you the utter mystery
of questions without answers,
pain without balm,
sorrow without comfort,
and fears without relief,
which hound my days
and haunt my sleep.

Facing the mystery, Lord,
grant me grace
to wrestle with it
until I name the fears
and force them to set me free
to move on with whatever limp I'm left with;
to wrestle with it
until the pain teach me
and I befriend it,
until the silence subdues me
into an awareness that it is holy
and I am healed by it;
to wrestle with it
until I go deeper in it
to gratitude
for all the shapes of wholeness
and hope that bless me.

O God,
turn your Spirit loose now,
and me with it,
that I may go to where the darkness is
to face with you the terrible uncertainty of tomorrow:
of what will happen,
what might happen,
what could happen,
to me
and to my children
and to my friends,
to my job,
to my relationships,
to my country;
all that I cannot see, but fantasize,
that I would prevent, but cannot,
and so must accept as possibilities.

Facing the uncertainty, Lord,
grant me grace
to look at it directly and openly and truly,
to laugh at it with crazy faith
in the crazy promise
that nothing can separate me from  your love;
to laugh for the joy of it,
the joy of those saving surprises
that also stir in the darkness.
And, so, I trust,
despite the dark uncertainty of tomorrow,
in the light of my today's
in the cross,
in a kingdom coming,
and, so, I move on and pray on
with Jesus, my friend and redeemer.

"Guerrillas of Grace --Prayers for the Battle"
--Ted Loder