Prayer to see truly Everyday Life

                Read Psalm 8.

¹ O Lord, our Sovereign,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens.
²     Out of the mouths of babes and infants
you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,
    to silence the enemy and the avenger.

³ When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars that you have established;
⁴ what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
    mortals that you care for them?

⁵ Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
⁶ You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
    you have put all things under their feet,
⁷ all sheep and oxen,
    and also the beasts of the field,
⁸ the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
    whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

⁹ O Lord, our Sovereign,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

 

 

       I do not have to look far, Lord -- no farther, I am afraid, than my own life -- to find signs of the pettiness that can grip the human spirit.  However, remind me today that neither do I have to look far -- no farther, perhaps, than my own life -- to find signs of the splendor of the human spirit.  Remind me that words like heroism, beauty, and sacrifice do not soar so high they never touch down in my life and in the lives of those nearby. I may need to look no further than my heart or the heart of one near to me to see the hero, the beauty, and the sacrifice for others, which I long to see. I need not fear who I am or can be.  

¨   It is likely that within a block or two of where I live, a woman is confronting a life-shortening illness, or a man is struggling with a radical career adjustment.  Each is facing head-on what they must face, and each is doing it with an unflinching courage.  I do not need to long for the hero of stage and screen or the superhero who gains so much attention. I need the reminder of the heroism of everyday life. Heroism is not far-off; it is close by.

¨   Help me to see and have the kind of beauty that is more achievement than gift.  I see this beauty in the callused, knobby hands of an aged carpenter.  I see this beauty in the crinkled laugh-lines moving out from the eyes and mouth of a proud and loving grandmother.  I see this beauty in the steady, firm-jawed look of someone who has lived with pain and mastered it. 

¨   In a fatherless family, an older sister goes to work on graduating from high school and sees to it that she gives a younger brother the educational opportunities she did not have.  A man who had looked forward to his retirement of travel and recreation instead spends his retirement years lovingly and patiently caring for his stroke-victim wife.  Genuine, impressive sacrifice touches down sometimes in the house next door, or in our house. 

Grant me, Lord, eyes that can see and a mind that can appreciate the glory and grandeur of the human spirit that, more often than I sometimes think, weaves its bright colors into the texture of everyday life.

                Amen.