Abundant God,
Your mercy grows like seeds scattered into a fertile field and
Jesus scatters good seeds with reckless abandon:
Seeds of mercy and compassion
Seeds of wonder and surprise
Seeds that sometimes grow quickly and seeds that sometimes grow at snail’s pace
He can see what will be—and what can be—and gives time to let all grow
We ask for patience in discerning and waiting—for ourselves yes, but also for others.
Help us to delight in seeing others grow—others that we find hard to even imagine could grow
or want to grow in to something bigger, and better, and more generous—
It is much easier to love and cheer on those who look like us—
talk like us, live like us, believe like us, behave like us,
those who grow exactly they way we want them to grow
It’s easier to consider ourselves the good seeds and write others off as bad seeds
incapable of understanding or seeing the “right” way
Let your patience and your mercy complicate our simple narratives
and lead us to a deeper kind of patience, a deeper way of mercy—
The same patience and mercy that we have already freely received in vast abundance:
For when we were growing slowly, or not growing at all, you nurtured us,
When we were in our greatest need of forgiveness, you forgave us
When we couldn’t even believe in ourselves, you believed in us
When we told the same of story of winners and losers, haves and haves not, you told a different
story
Lord hold us, this morning, in your mercy and complicate our tired ways of seeing
Complicate our notions of what good growth looks like
So that we may grow in your love—for ourselves, for our neighbors, for the world
We pray all this in Jesus’ name, who taught us to pray saying:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.
Amen.