A Prayer of Hope

Oh God, let something essential happen to me, something more than interesting or entertaining or thoughtful.

Oh God. Let something essential happen to me, something awesome, something real. Speak to my condition, Lord, and change me somewhere inside where it matters.

Let something happen which is my real self, Oh God.

Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace

I meet regularly with a group of folks to grow in our faith together and we pondered this prayer last night. It’s funny, I’ve had this book in my house for quite a while, but I was put off by the title. It was only in a Lenten mailing that I saw it.

This prayer challenges me to hope. And hope can be scary……and vulnerable. Truth be told, I feel safer with more general, open-ended prayers where most anything could be considered an answer. Praying like this puts my heart and risk and opens me not only to a potential radical process of transformation, but also to disappointment. What if nothing happens that I can see or discern?

The most real and gritty prayers get us to this place with God. When we are honest with our truest desires and most desperate wants we open ourselves up in the most vulnerable way! I think that our most desperate surrender places us in the tenderest place of faith. We are in a Divine story that unfolds in a frustratingly human way. We can’t see the whys or how things fit together at many points and that sometimes makes it harder to ask God for real things.

I think that I am going to sit with this prayer for a while. It challenges me and causes me to lean into the mystery of faith.