Prayer: We Bid Your Presence

We know about your presence
that fills the world,
that occupies our life,
that makes our life in the world true and good.

We notice your powerful transformative presence
in word and
in sacrament,
in food and in water,
in gestures of mercy
and practices of justice,
in gentle neighbors
and daring gratitude.

We count so on your presence
and then plunge - without intending - into your absence.
We find ourselves alone, abandoned, without resources
remembering your goodness,
hoping your future,
but mired in anxiety and threat and risk beyond our coping.

In your absence we bid your presence,
come again,
come soon,
come here:

Come to every garden become a jungle
Come to every community become joyless
and sad and numb.

We acknowledge your dreadful absence and insist on your presence.
Come again,
come soon,
come here.


(Brueggemann: Prayers for a Privileged People, 49)