Lord, Have Mercy: Prayers for When the World Feels Overwhelming
How groaning, not numbing, may be the most faithful response to a broken world.
Dear reader,
My heart is heavy today. It’s one of those days when I know I’ve reached my threshold of media intake, but my eyes cannot turn away.
Lord, have mercy.
It’s one of those days when the news cycle is a restless beast and my personal algorithm is its angry sidekick, churning out an endless array of images, hot takes, and ideological antagonizing.
Lord, have mercy.
It’s one of those days when I’ve fed the machine… perhaps I’m feeding it now. And it’s eating my lunch.
Lord, have mercy.
It’s one of those days when “compassion fatigue” paralyzes me, and I cannot bear the reality of seeing another school shooting, another senseless act of political violence, or another bomb being dropped on kids.
Lord, have mercy.
It’s one of those days where my desire to be right comes up against my capacity for compassion.
Lord, have mercy.
It’s one of those days where I find myself fighting against that peculiar spiritual discipline that Jesus so often practiced, weeping.1
Lord, have mercy.
It’s one of those days when my prayers feel hollow and meaningless, incapable of enacting change in the world around me.
Lord, have mercy.
It’s one of those days when I have become acutely aware that I am a human creature, made from dust, designed for locality, and created for context, but I find myself living in a globalized world, made for complexity, designed for confusion, and created for chaos. I think I can choose to turn aside, but my flesh is weak.
Lord, have mercy.
It’s one of those days…
What do we do in these dire times?
When the weight of sin is too heavy for our hearts to handle?
When numbing is easier than showing up?
What do we say in these sick moments?
When the log in our neighbor’s eye is easier to see than the speck in our own?
When the antagonisms of the left and the right hold us hostage and keep us from seeing our collective humanness?
I do not know what we ought to do.
I do not know what we ought to say.
I am finding relief in the gospel of grace today, where the “right thing to do” has never been a prerequisite for Kingdom citizenship.
Thank God for grace.
I’m glad that God is not a God that only answers to the right incantation and the perfect combination of words.
Thank God for mercy.
I find peace in knowing that a groan is good to God.
Groan on, brother.
Groan on, sister.
‘Til Kingdom come.
Maybe your heart is heavy, too. Heavy hearts come and go, but let us not wish them away too soon. Let us not fall prey to numbing, or to medicating, or to soothing our aching hearts too quickly.
Let us, rather, tend to them, for I am suspiciously convinced that heavy hearts might be signposts to the Kingdom of God among us.
The Spirit of God is always going before us, leading us, guiding us, and by God’s grace, “interceding for us with wordless groans.”2
Thank God for wordless groans.
And if your groan runs out, perhaps you can turn to the ancient prayers of the church, which have sustained generations before you and will surely sustain generations to come.
It is with a heavy heart and a feeble groan that I offer this ancient prayer to you now, dear reader.
It is the prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we recieve,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
In this time between the times—the now-but-not-yet, this “liminal space” we all inhabit—between God’s initial disruption of the human story through the incarnation of Jesus and His promised return to bring ultimate victory and judgment, let us not lose hope, dear friends.
Let us not lose hope.
Let us groan.
And let us recognize our groan as a grace.
And let grace have its way with us.
John 11:35 NIV
Romans 8:26 NIV