From Jim McGuiggan.... A PRAYER FOR GOD'S COMING

A PRAYER FOR GOD'S COMING

O Lord, it seems that we have always been looking for you. Prophets told of your coming and psalmists sang of your future arrival. The whole creation groans and wonders when you will show yourself and right all wrongs and deliver it from the bondage to which it has been subjected not of its own will but in hope. A hope for which it longs.

Your church herself wonders why you are taking so long to arrive. Sometimes we think that even the evil doers of the world have moments when they wish you would come and stop them in their evil tracks so that they will not plunge even deeper into the moral mire they presently wallow in.

Millions toil only to have the wages of their honest labor cruelly snatched from them and they weep bitter tears as they continue impossible tasks. Millions sell themselves and their body parts and even their children to stay alive and women are forced into shame so families can eat a handful of rice. People ask for bread and are given a stone while tyrants live in luxury and governments reward violence.

It’s been so long and still we haven’t seen you exalt the humble and bring down the proud and arrogant. We have heard such stories of you in olden days and we believe them but we wonder why there are none to tell today. We hear of them happening here and there and once in a while and we wonder why they don't happen everywhere and all the time.

Forgive our impatience but do please remember that it stems in part from your own established righteousness and reputation which is proclaimed in the hymns and songs of your People and in light of the promises you have made. Still, forgive us and help us to continue to believe that in Jesus Christ you have vindicated yourself and will gloriously fulfill all your promises, and that we will all see and know that you are a God worthy of praise and that your faithful love endures forever.

With sadness and some fear we recognize that you might have come to us and gone away again—might have come to us in disguise, perhaps as a child wanting to be loved, a woman looking for justice or a man wearily and in some irritation looking for his soul. Perhaps we were too busy praying for your coming that we had no time for you when you came. We implore you not to leave us this way but to return to us. And when you do finally come to us without disguise may you find us busy responding compassionately to you in your many disguises. O come to our aid, we pray, though we are a wicked and wayward human family for there is so much pain and suffering and loss and there is no one to help us but you. No one but you!

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.