Lent 14

Some days in my life are "rat race" days. Today only held some of that, but I had a long conversation with someone today about the tensions of being in ministry. Some days, you feel a great sense of belonging, but still others--perhaps too many than we'd like--seem like days of simple employment. This feeling is borne out of the "rat race" mentality. We might do well to understand church work as a sacred task. Ordering the life of the church should be a privilege..but more often than not, it turns into just any other job. It gets polluted with bad attitudes, jealousy, greed, power plays--just like any other area of administration.

So, my prayer for today comes from Walter Brueggemann.

We also live double lives
Power turns and postures and exhibits.
It controls and manages and plots.
We participate in it,
we benefit from it,
we are dazzled by it… and more than a little afraid.
Just underneath, all the while…
Just underneath dazzling power
sits violence and brutality,
greed and fear and envy,
cunning and shamelessness.
In that too we participate.
Like the ancients, we also live double lives,
public in pageant and role and office,
hidden in meanness and thinness.
We do not do well at bringing this double together.
But we confess you to be Lord of all our lives,
Give us new freedom about our public lives,
give us new candor about our hidden lives,
Correct what is brutal and greedy and fearful,
chasten what is hidden and mean.
Make us women and men of shalom,
the kind of welfare you will for our common life. Amen.