If Not Us…Then Who?

O, Jesus:

We seek you in places you have already left

and fail to see you when you stand before us.

You interrupt our comfort with your nakedness.

Touch our possessiveness with your poverty.

You challenge our smugness with your humility.

You came so we could touch you with our own hands.

Yet we refuse to touch those you love most deeply.

You are at once: sign and hope and stumbling block.

Your insistent call disturbs our settled lives.

May we neither cling to our pain nor refuse

to embrace the cost when it is required of us.

O God:

You drive us into the desert to search out your Truth.

Uncover our injustice and arrogance and stir us to a new vision

of your outrageous, relentless, extravagant Love.

You urge us beyond all reason to love our enemies with that same Love.

Disarm our judgments and criticisms with your radical mercy.

You are gift, you are hope, you are joy meant to be taken to those who sit in darkness.