Friends, at the end of next week, I am heading with a group of wonderful people – most of whom are from Church of the Redeemer – on a pilgrimage to the border of the United States and Mexico. We are going in order to be united more closely with our immigrant siblings. We are going in order to grow spiritually. We are going in order to be inspired by God’s truth and how it is being lived out in the hearts and the lives of the people who cross the border. We are going because God is sending us. With this in mind, I would like to share with you a prayer I am praying for my time on this pilgrimage. It goes like this:
Lord, please use this time to lead me into deeper connection with you, and with those around me.
I will be setting out on this pilgrimage with a small group of faithful people. Help us to see how we belong to each other. Help us to get to know one another more fully. May I listen deeply to the stories that are told among us as we journey together. May I listen deeply to the stories of the people whom we visit. I pray that I begin to notice my companions’ particularities, eccentricities, preferences, passions, allergies, blind spots, concerns, fears, hopes, dreams. I pray that I will get to see them at their best, their worst, and everything in between – and that I love them for it. May I love them for who they are, not for who I thought or wished or hoped they were. And please help me to be myself with them, so that if ever they’re going to love me, it’ll be as I am and not just as I wish I were. Unite us to each other.
We are calling this a religious pilgrimage, God, so I pray that I feel your presence. May I feel closer to you at the end of this trip than I did at the beginning. For the record, God, I don’t think there’s such a thing as knowing you enough – anymore than I think I can know myself, my spouse, my children, by friends enough. There’s no end goal here: I just pray that somehow in this time I have a moment or two where I know you’re there, where I sense that we are in this together, and where you and I will grow closer to one another. Unite us to each other.
Lord, make this a time of growth.
I want to grow. And at the same time, I crave comfort and stability. God, I know these two things are often at such odds. I watch my son growing up and his heels hurt and I ask the doctor why and the answer is literally because growing hurts. And, Lord, it’s been a while since I grew up and I guess I let myself forget that growing hurts. But I don’t want to be stagnant. There is no life in stagnancy.
I realize, Lord, that I am incredibly complacent. This country I love and call home and call mine is actively terrorizing immigrants. There’s no two ways about it. It’s intentional and it’s cruel, and it’s racist and it’s everything you are not. And I wake up every day and go do my job and watch tv with my family and go to bed with my down comforter in my king-sized bed and we complain because the five of us share a bathroom that is always relatively clean and functional and we have so much laundry to do. All the while my siblings – people you have made in your image – are being terrorized, rounded up and detained in horrifically inhumane conditions, deported, and killed, all in my name. And I hate it and I do nothing about it and, God, I am worried that my life and my heart are becoming too small.
So I pray that you use this pilgrimage as a time to help me grow. May my understanding of your creation and my part in its healing and reconciliation expand.
Lord, please inspire me on this pilgrimage.
I use the word inspire intentionally even though we sometimes use it so innocuously. But I know, God, that the word literally means that the Spirit is within me. And that’s what I want. I want your Holy Spirit within me, because that is what it will take for me to grow, and because I know that I will not be able to deal with the discomfort without the courage and conviction your Spirit gives me.
So when I pray for you to inspire me on this pilgrimage, Lord, I am not asking you to make sure I am awed by some serene moment in nature, or that I have a great idea for a sermon or a blog series. I am praying that you take my restlessness and double it. I am praying that your presence breathed into me equips me to see the world, to see my country, to see my church, to see to see my neighbors – especially my immigrant neighbors – a little more like you see them. I think that’s what I mean when I ask that you inspire me. I want to breathe your breath and walk in your footsteps and see through your eyes and love your world with your heart.
Lord, please send me from this pilgrimage into your world to serve your people with humility, compassion, and faithfulness.
God, I am thinking of your servant Jeremiah saying to you that when he refuses to speak and live your truth that it feels like his bones are on fire. I am thinking of how much my insides burn when I try to hold my breath for too long: I don’t just want your Spirit within me so that I can hold onto it: Please God help me also to exhale, so that I may share your Spirit, your love, your truth with everyone you place in my life. I am not asking, God, that you somehow make me preachier, more sanctimonious, cockier in my dogma, more chauvinistic in my desire for everyone to think or act or believe like I think, act, and believe.
No, I’m asking God that you help me to act with fidelity to your vision for a beloved community of all whom you have created. Send me into the world not to convert but to be converted by your presence in everyone I meet. Send me into the world not to speak loudly, but to act justly and to love magnificently.
Please don’t let me keep you all to myself. As if I ever could. As if you ever would.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
