Daily Worship

Father, your deeds are wonderful,
and beyond my understanding.
Your thoughts are not my thoughts
and neither are your ways my ways.

And yet sometimes…..
I might presume to understand,
to know what your purposes are,
to pass judgement on another
when in fact I don’t know
the full picture.

I see in a glass darkly.
Misty outlines
of half recognised shapes.
And I presume that this is all there is to see.
That in naming what I see
I recognise it
and understand it.
I have described,
and prescribed,
and drawn conclusions
which of course must be correct,
because I know the truth!

Father protect me from myself.
From the arrogance that presumes that I see all there is to see
and know all that can be known.
Save me from believing that your complete revelation, in Jesus
is the same as my complete understanding.

Father, your deeds are wonderful,
and beyond my understanding.
Your thoughts are not my thoughts,
and neither are your ways my ways.

Give me the humility to doubt myself.
Give me the grace to accept others.
Give me the faith to trust you;
that you speak sometimes in words I cannot understand,
sometimes to people of whom I don’t approve,
sometimes in ways that are alien to all I have believed,
thought,
understood.
Give me faith to believe that your perfect revelation
is still being revealed to me
moment by moment,
hour by hour,
day by day,

and that you will keep surprising me until the very end.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.