Turn to Prayer in Times of Change

As I’m preparing for the upcoming seasons and doing my own study, I’m reading a prayer written for after Pentecost, I’m struck with just how much we need to hear this prayer now. 

Creator of all things, form us anew in the likeness of Christ. Open up to us possibilities we cannot imagine, and free us from self-imposed limitations. Help us to explore the depths of faith and the heights of possibility, for wherever we go, you are with us. Unite us now. Amen. 

It’s so very true. Form us anew in the likeness of Christ. 

We’ll soon re-witness Christ rising from the dead, forming to be the fully-divine person we know and love and follow. We need a transformation as powerful and as strong as that one, a transformation that will take us from this point forward and give us a new life in the church. 

Open us to possibilities we cannot imagine—whether it’s Christ rising from the dead or the church going in a new direction that we never saw coming, this is life. Things change, life changes, and we can never imagine what it’ll look like in the coming years. We can dream, we can put images in our head, but we’ll never know the reality of what those days and years will look like without being present for them, present in the eyes of God.

Free us from self-imposed limitations. What are we limiting ourselves on? Sometimes I think it’s our imaginations that limit us, that we can’t see where it is we might be going and so we hesitate when it’s time for us to take a step. We don’t know where we’ll end up. We can dream and hope and pray, but we’ll never know what God has in store for us until we reach it. That’s our limitation, and it’s important for us to rely on God just as Jesus did in those last few days and hours. 

Help us to explore the depths of faith and the heights of possibility—this is what we’ve been doing through Lent, hopefully. We’ve been taking time to deepen our faith, to examine and look at it in a new way. We’ve taken the time to explore our faith and to let the possibilities of what might happen soar. Lent is about buckling down and letting the chaos of the world spin around us as we become more and more rooted in Christ. Those are the heights of possibility, what all we can accomplish in Christ because without him we are nothing. 

For wherever we go, you are with us. Could we not have learned this lesson more poignantly than through the season of Lent? By following Jesus’s path through the wilderness, by taking our own journey through the wilderness, we’ve learned that Christ is always with us and our Creator has not left our side. We are never alone. 

This prayer is one we need, a reminder of everything this season that is now over gives us. We have been given faith, stronger and active faith, we have been given life and joy and strength. We have been given everything we could possibly need in the resurrection of our Messiah.