Lent Day 10 | Selah!
Today's reading: Isaiah 41:18-20
God of seas and sky, you make rivers to flow in barren lands. You craft wastelands into living oases, clearing rubble and calling forth fresh growth. So too, you summon from within us bubbling springs, raising to new life all that we have put to death.Wet our dryness. Flood our parched hearts. Dance on our tongues, that we may sing forth with your praise.We know that our thirst for justice comes from you, and that this hurting world longs to brim with your mercy and presence. Let the world know by our acts and activisms that you are at work in our lives, that you are Risen, that each creature was made in the fluid image of a good and gushing God.This Lent, as your people across this earth experience severe water shortages and go without safe sustenance, we ask that you move in this world. As you nourished your people in deserts past, let each creature now be able to drink deeply of living and clean waters. Plant fertile growth in the soil of our souls, that we would labor for all who thirst. Today, we also pray in gratitude for the faithful witness of all the middle spaces in your creation. For salamanders and all amphibians, for water lilies and platypuses, for dusks and dawns, swamps and ocean sands, and each gift which shimmers in between the stark binaries of dry and wet: we give you thanks.We pray, too, in special gratitude for your liquid mercies in the lives of our queer and transgender siblings in Christ, whose created beauty and gifts go too often forgotten in your church. Shatter our fearful clinging to either-ors, our bondage to sharp and sterile edges, and buoy us towards the incarnate and cosmic peace into which you have called us.Amen.
Created by: Kenji KuramitsuAbout the author: Kenji Kuramitsu is a graduate student at McCormick Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago. He serves on the boards of the Japanese American Citizens League and the Reformation Project.