Note: As a personal, spiritual discipline, reviving my practice in the Lenten season of 2017, I revise the prayers I wrote then for each of the forty days of this Lent; each petition focusing on a theme, a concern weighing on my mind and heart or a care of my soul and spirit.
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On God’s Goodness and my prodigality in prayer (being a meditation on the words of Charlotte Elliott)…
O Lord, I keep comin’ back ‘round to my waywardness.
With my best intentions, I seek You in prayer. Yet most often (not that I need confess this to You, for You know!) I cannot stay the course. I cannot hold my thoughts together in any semblance of order.
Daily distractions, try as I might to ignore them (even the small ones and even for an instant), get in my way and lead me wayward. (Even when I try to thank You for Your boundless Goodness, Your beneficent God-ness, I lose my way and need beseech You to help me to thank You!)
I would fear: Do I weary You, Lord? Yet, by faith, I believe that I do not (though I oft weary myself!).
For You, being Love, love me. You delight that I come to You, praying, “Just as I am without one plea.”
Amen.
Endnote: Charlotte Elliott (1789-1871), English poet, hymn writer, and editor best known for her hymns, “Just as I Am” (1835) and “Thy will be done” (1834).
occasional observations of mind and heart, soul and spirit 
Paul,
I’m guessing there are lots of people out there who are “wayward’ right now. Fear and uncertainty can be so dominant in our lives that we may momentarily lose our focus on our faith. What I love most about your Lenten prayers is that they bring us right back to focusing on our prayers and our faith in general. If there is a positive about this virus, it may be that it’s occurring during Lent AND it’s forcing churches to connect with parishioners in a way they may not have explored until now…. and I hope it can remain in place when the crisis is over so that shut-Ins can stay connected to their faith communities.
Much love!
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Hmmm, Loretta, I hadn’t thought of the rise/occurrence of the coronavirus and Lent and, thus, the impetus for churchfolk to find new (surely, old, but long out-of-use, perhaps) ways to connect one with and to another.
As for what happens after the crisis of this pandemic passes (tho’, and given that our president seems to relish playing on his hunches, here’s my hunch; this won’t pass in the sense that we’ll not have to deal with the range of coronaviruses, for, I believe, this – dealing with one virulent “super-bug” after another – is the ongoing state of play), I suspect our lives, both individual and communal, will be transformed. Our faith, that is, our confidence in a Power greater than ourselves, will be required for us to face and to live into our new reality.
Love
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