I wonder as we begin this second week of Lent about our repenting and turning towards the Lord. We live in these 40 days the way we think God has called us to live. We sacrifice and give up chocolate or pop, but is that really what God has called us to? These 40 days are the model, but should be lived all year long. It is not for us to self sacrifice only for 40 days, but 365.25 days a year (got Leap Year in that way!). There are no excuses, we are called to live sacrificially everyday, every hour of our lives.
The closing prayer on my devotional was very profound for me today. So here it is a prayer by Howard Thurman (1900-1981) taken from For All the Saints A Prayer book for and by the Church pages 871 and 872:
Give me the listening ear. I seek this day the ear that will not shrink from the world that corrects and admonishes – the word that holds up before me the image of myself that causes me to pause and reconsider – the word that challenges me to deeper consecration and higher resolve – the word that lays bare needs that make my own days uneasy, that seizes upon every good decent impulse of my nature, channeling it into paths of healing and in lives of others.
Give me the listening ear. I seek this day the disciplined mind, the disciplined heart, the disciplined life that makes my ear the focus of attention through which I may become mindful of expressions of life foreign to my own. I seek the stimulation that lifts me out of old ruts and established habits which keep me conscious of myself, my needs, my personal interests.
Give me this day – the eye that is willing to see the meaning of the ordinary, the familiar, the commonplace – the eye that is willing to see my own faults for what they are – the eye that is willing to see the likable thought was correct – the strength in what I had labeled as weakness. Give me the eye that is willing to see that Thou hast not left Thyself without a witness in every living thing. Thus to walk with reverence and sensitiveness through all the days of my life.
Give me the listening ear
The eye that is willing to see.
Amen.
aSacredRebel 