During a recent devotion we were encouraged to write a prayer of lament. I have found lament to be a very helpful way of holding the many paradoxes that arise as I attempt to follow Jesus as a broken person in a broken world. Yet lament is (often) strangely maligned in many Christian communities. Anyway – here’s a wee lament in hopes that it might encourage you to pray/write/yell your own.
Oh Lord
I claim to love your earth,
But I rape it with consumption.
My shirts stain Bengali rivers,
My appetite, Brazillian forests.
I claim to love your people,
But I perpetuate slave-labour,
I encourage and disparage,
I build-up and tear them down.
I’m a walking paradox,
On a rope across an ocean
Of hypocrisy in which I often bathe.
Pointing fingers at injustice –
Always outwards, sometimes in.
But you O Lord
Loved David
Post Uriah,
Called Jonah
Post sea-creature,
Sent disciples
Post desertion.
Blind me daily on Damascus roads
That your life in greater measure
Might be brought here
On this day
And at this minute:
Always inwards, always out.
patmos 
Love it. A blessing and challenge all in one. Bless you Clint
Sent from my iPhone
Thanks Ant! Hope you and the family are well…
Deep thoughts; challenging questions; perhaps a desire to reconcile the heart of God with the heart of mankind …. but we might have to wait a while 😉
Thanks Dad, yeah – the waiting gets to me some days 🙂
Love the last line, always inwards, always out. I’m guessing you’re saying that we’re blinded by Christ in our hearts; and this luminescence shines out the brighter!
Larry!
Good to hear from you! Hope you and the family are well!
Re: the last line – yes! I want integrity not just between my inward and outward life, but between the whole of my life and the life of Jesus. I love it that the narrative of Paul (who wrote most of the New Testament!) is included in the Bible because it offers me both hope and a warning. A warning that at times I may well think I’m passionately doing God’s work (as Paul thought when he was on a killing spree), but might be actually undoing God’s work – I want to be open to ‘Damascus road’ events where God stops me in in my tracks and shows me where I’m getting it all horribly wrong. But Paul’s story also offers me hope that even if I am in that place, God still desires to work with and through me, even if a few days of traumatic blindness are needed. So although I never enjoy those moments of correction, I still want them because I know that there might well be no other way to achieving greater integrity between my whole life (inward and outward) and the life of Jesus.