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 my one and only consoling thought (being a meditation on Romans 7.21-34)…
O God, I take heart in this one and only consoling thought: Your Changeless Faithfulness.
For I am neither changeless nor faithful. Throughout my days, even with the best of my intentions, I fail to do the things I ought to do and do the things that I ought not to do. In both, falling prey to manifold temptations. Some new. Most old.
This latter, these olden compulsions, I know well. For over time and through my experience, well-rehearsed they have been and have become.
In (all!) this, I fall well (truly, unwell!) short of progress toward the good, Your Good.
In a word, O God, if I were to reckon myself changeless, then it is in the faithfulness of my unfaithfulness to You.
Thus, daily, I must sing:
Great is Thy faithfulness…
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
To which I alway then say: Amen!
Endnote: Great is Thy Faithfulness (1923), lyrics, Thomas Obediah Chisholm (1866-1960), music, William Marion Runyan (1870-1957) is based on the phrase in the Book of Lamentations 3.23.
occasional observations of mind and heart, soul and spirit 
I googled Great is Thy Faithfulness so I could hear it again after reading this. Thanks for that!!
Love
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You are welcome, most welcome. Love you back
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Love that hymn, Paul. Thanks for the reminder of its reassurance.
I’m writing this a couple of days after your post and just after having read Richard Rohr’s daily meditation for today, Friday, March 27. What he had to say today recalled for me this post of yours. His translation of Romans 3:3: “Any fear ‘that [our] lack of fidelity could cancel God’s fidelity is absurd.’” My further translation: “To the degree that I can count on my own unfailing inability to live up to the Gospel’s charge to love without end, I can likewise count on God/Love to continue to love me (and the world) without end.”
Much love to you today, Paul.
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Amen, dearest Karen, for God’s ever-faithfulness!
This Romans passage is one of Paul’s more convoluted thrashings-about in his effort to articulate the wonder of God’s Love. Clearly, some in his time sought (and, perhaps, some still would seek) to make a case that God’s Goodness would allow us to be as willfully (and willingly!) awful as possible so to enhance the shower of God’s Grace. The absurdity of such a notion, for Paul, I think, rests in one thing: Righteousness is God’s gift and declaration and God’s gift and declaration alone. There is nothing that we can do or not do to compel God to be gracious…
And to this, I say: Amen!
Love to you, dear sister, and Ted and Emilia,
Paul
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