Good Friday

A Prayer for Good Friday...in Such a Time as This

O Lord, I ask for faith enough to accept the love

which has been revealed to me in him.

Keep me from twitching and wriggling away

from the Cross of Jesus.

Keep me from banking it with flowers

and hiding it behind fine words.

For if it is to mean antything real,

it must stand in the deep places of my heart.

It must become a vantage point from which to interpret life.

It must mean that I too will enter into the pain of life

and bear some measure of participation

in the agony of being.

It must mean I cannot hold aloof

from a world of suffering and hatred and division.

I must mean that I shall be willing to enter into life

with all of its sorrow and joy.

Help me to find its exact meaning for myself --

at home,

in the community,

in personal relations of all kinds.

Help me, for the meaing of the Cross is not easy to find.

Somehow I know it is a spirit of life and a way of being

that only comes as I keep as close as possible to you.

I know that our world is desperately in need

of new ways of understanding,

We human beings still follow

the ancient paths of war and slaughter,

of greed and destruction.

Help us to seek new ways -- 

ways of cooperation and mutual respect,

ways of human dignity and responsible relationships.

Help us in our national and international life.

Help us in the church and in our communities.

I confess that I am hard to help

for I get my back up when things go differently

from the way in which I think they should go.

But I am grateful that you do not quit.

I am grateful for your amazing patience

and for that flint-hard love that never gives in.

I am grateful.

Let me be grateful enough to respond with some small measure 

of the same kind of love in my relationships.

Give me more of your spirit.

AMEN.

-- "For Passion Sunday"

from

  A Book of Uncommon Prayer

Kenneth G. Phifer

The Upper Room, 1981