A Prayer for Saturday

Old Stories Become New Songs
    (On reading 1 & 2 Samuel)


We love to tell the old, old story.
We love to sing the old, old song
                          of your saving deeds of mercy and
                                        freedom and
                                        healing and
                                        newness.

We now about Exodus freedom
                         and dancing tambourines.

We now about land and huge clusters of grape.

We know about rivers of water and
                         rivers of oil.

We now about the strangeness that
                         the blind see,
                         the lame walk,
                         the lepers are cleansed,
                         the dead are raised,
                         the poor rejoice.

We know.  Give us courage to
                         trust what we know and to
                         obey what we hope.

We know that the old, old story - in our telling - becomes
                         a new, dangerous, transforming song.  And so we sing!


(Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People, 109)