We cannot help but feel that those of us who have bowed down before you have found the path of life after having wandered around here and there.
We cannot help but feel that those of us who have bowed down before you have found the path of life after having wandered around here and there.
How can we ever repay your grace of having established us in a position where we can call you, "Abba, Father," and your not having minded the endless suffering we did not even know about, and your having protected us, purified us, and led us to this place?
We don't have anything to repay you with. At this time we cannot help but feel that even if we give you our bodies, we cannot repay that grace; and even if we all offer you our hearts and minds, we are inadequate to raise our heads before what you have achieved through your suffering.
We know that it is your desire and it is your situation that you who have led us to this point have the responsibility to save us and to see a day of glory through us.
And when we think that you hope to find comfort through people like us, we cannot help but feel ashamed in the presence of our father who has endured the peaks and valleys of the course of history, placing your hope in our inadequate selves.
If our flesh and blood were able to feel for your heart, and our bones were able to take on a form that could constitute a personality, then we would earnestly hope and desire, Father, that you would allow that being to be able to become a substantial form whocano testify to your unchanging self.
How much you must have longed for a holy, glorious being who could be part of you and return glory to you even with every cell. In the course of history, our ancestors could not attend to you in that way. We know that it is a fact of history that they followed heaven, and then at times felt resentment, and at times broke their promises, and were proud of being in the realm of the chosen people and then gave up.
Father! Since we have received this kind of grief-filled blood lineage, today we confidently say we believe in heaven, but we are people who are in a position close to the evil world that can betray heaven tomorrow.
Father, please have compassion on us who are like this. Father, please hold on to us. We earnestly hope and desire that you will please graft your heart of life to our thirsting minds, and please carry out the work of resurrection which fills us with new life.
Although many people have come and gone, and even now many are coming and going, until today there have been no people who grasped your situation and grasped your heart and wept, please allow us to become people who can grasp your situation and heart and weep. Please allow there to be many sons and daughters on the earth whose minds are filled with a desire to live for you and who think, "I want to attend my father," and who knows how to be indignant with heaven and earth, and to be indignant with history and to be indignant with our fallen ancestors.
We have humbly prayed in the name of the Lord. Amen.
END OF PRAYER