Morning Prayer

Water That Does Not Come Bottled

(On reading Psalm 104)

Creator God, we celebrate you:

you make springs gush forth in the valleys;

they flow between the hills,

giving drink to every wild animal,

the wild asses quench their thirst.

You send rain and water the earth, it springs to growth,

we eat and are satisfied,

we thank you and easily push back from the table.

In our comfortable plenty,

we notice drought here

and famine there, the work of human hands.

The lack seems remote from us,

but in solidarity we register the loss

and the fear,

and the death.

We count on water and rain and growth and bread.

We count on your regularities,

but then we look for peace but find no good,

for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.

We do not expect failed rain,

or failed bread,

or failed peace,

or failed healing.

The failure lies deep in the fabric of our common life.

We turn away from that self-destructiveness . . . back to you.

You - Creator, beginning and end,

first and last.

You - seedtime and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter.

You - whose patience we try.

You - whose sovereign will for good

overrides our capacity for self-destruction.

Look to this world of need: restore,

recreate,

enliven,

give rain,

give food,

give peace.

For there is no other source.

None except you in your sovereign reliability.

(Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People, 171)