Lord God, if there were one thing I could ask for, it is this…
A church awake, a people alive, a body with seeing eyes
Enliven our deepest desires.
Fill us with the imagination of your kingdom and longings for it so great that we no longer can find satisfaction in mere comfort.
May our whole hearts burn for change.
May our hands, our bones, our voices itch to create the beauty that we see as we look into the eyes of the eternal God and forward to the Feast of the Lamb for which we are destined.
Lord God, may we, as this body of believers, find once again our yearning for you.
Let it propel us daily into your presence.
May our practices and our disciplines be doorways of intimacy to which we cannot wait to return again and again.
Stir in us in this place forgotten feelings, dashed dreams of paradise.
Those aches which might be healed only by your Divine touch and the cleansing tears of Jesus, your Son.
Stir in us here in the depths a joy, a zeal that is surprising and new and can only point to your mercy and majesty
And Lord God, will you surprise us with gifts so rare and specific that only one who knows our most secret places could give them?
Let our eyes see your signature in these graces and proclaim glory.
Let it be on our lips
May we share of your evidences as a celebration with this, our church family, and as proclamation of this strange and wonderful powerful love we have known to the watching world
Lord God, wake us up.
Fill our bodies and our minds and our souls with your supernatural life.
Open our eyes to a new wonder, to curiosity, to a witness of your splendor.
Lord God, let us not be content just to receive of your goodness but as followers of your call, make us emissaries here.
May these new eyes and these new hearts and these new minds create with abandon the world you have called us to create.
Right here. Right now
Amen