Prayer Concerning Relationships

 

               I Corinthians 12:31-13:13.
And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
⁸ Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹ For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰ but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

I could use your help, Lord, in handling the relationships in my life that are not going very well right now.

                Some of them have never gone well.  The initial distance has never closed; the comfort and pleasure I think we both hoped would come with time have not come.  The words and gestures I intend to be friendly somehow consistently misfire.  Since circumstances of work or family have linked our lives together, I wish we could close the distance and we could warm up the coldness.

                The relationships not going well that trouble me most are the ones that have lost the ease and closeness and warmth they once had.  I feel the loss, and I think the other person may feel it, too.  I can do something about my side of the relationship.  Therefore, today, I pray: 

¨   For the patience to keep trying;

¨   For the freedom from the anxiety and insecurity that tend to make my efforts clumsy;

¨   For a readiness to see and acknowledge whatever blame is mine;

¨   For the grace to forgive trespasses and accept idiosyncrasies, knowing that in so doing I will only be giving what I need the other to give me.

Amen.