Afternoon Prayer

Hear my cries this afternoon, O God, as random and jumbled as they are. 

Hear the noises of my heart that have no articulation, that have no annunciation, but just remain guttural sounds. My words trip over one another. They can’t find structure to explain the ardor coursing through me. This intensity pushes through a channel far too small for the enormity of the weight of your presence and glory.

Only you are great enough to absorb this 

Hear me, O my God. 

Oh, the glorious audacity to be able to call you mine. You are not just the Father of Abraham and Jacob.

You are not just the Lord of Peter and Paul. You are mine. 

My God. 

Hear me then. But more, let me hear you. Open and stretch the canals of my inner ear so I might hear what you are speaking to me. Talk to me and may your Spirit translate words too divine for me to comprehend.

Even at this moment the intensity overwhelms me. Do I dare to even speak it aloud?

This it is a holy unction—an anointing I don’t deserve. And yet you pour this holy lubricant on me and it seeps into who I am and transforms me.  As I inhale my nostrils flare and my eyes burn. I am in a holy place now. I haven’t moved from my seat, but I am in the midst of the sacred. I am in your presence. 

The epiphany comes not as an explosion, but as an expansion. 

Why do I forget? Why do I lose grasp of these  inevitable truths? 

I was made to praise you. I was created to worship you—to lift my hands and bend my knee. Yet I fumble with my purpose. I stagger blindly on a well-lit path. 

Pour more oil, please. 

I ask for more because there is nothing else I can do. Nothing else I truly desire. 

I need nothing else but your holy unction to cause my rusty arms to rise and my corroded knees to bend and my stiff jaw to open. 

My God. 

My beautiful, beautiful God.