A
Prayer on the Feast of Jonathan Myrick Daniels
Holy and loving God,
help us to see ourselves
as You see us—
these people we are
beneath our colored flesh.
Burn away
with a purifying fire
the cataracts of ignorance
and
prejudice
Take from us
our small-mindedness,
our sometimes inbred need
to
see with human eyes
and
not with our true sight—
that vision you have set within us.
Replace the violence that grows within us
when we are
frightened
and challenged
with the peacefulness
and
the love you have shown to us
in Jesus, our brother and our friend.
Help us to embrace color—
to see, in our various tints,
the holiness of
our flesh.
Love us in all the colors of our skin—
in our reds,
in our blackness,
in our yellows
in our browns
and in our
whiteness.
Love us for the fire
of compassion and truth
that burns within us—
stronger than all
flesh.
Love us for the life within us—
for
the frail breath that is with us today
and
gone, in an instant, tomorrow.
Love us for the blood that courses
through all our veins—
the same-colored
blood
that was drained
from Jesus’ veins.
We ask this of You—
most holy
and loving God—
whose very presence in our lives
is one of light
and life
and,
yes, of color—
who, in Jesus, was one of us.
In the Spirit
You have given
us,
make us, truly,
One.
“A Prayer on the Feast of Jonathan Myrick
Daniels” originally appeared in the anthology, Race and Prayer: Collected Voices, Many Dreams, edited by Malcolm
Boyd and Bishop Chester L. Talton. Published in March 2003 by Morehouse Publishing.
No comments:
Post a Comment