Home Away by Lorraine Triggs

My husband’s eye doctor had just returned from London, and the two of them chatted a bit before his annual eye exam. When he asked where they had stayed, the doctor replied that she and her husband stayed in a flat they found on HomeAway, which has moveditshome to Vrbo.

Even though Vrbo doesn’t have quite the same ring as HomeAway, my husband and I like the concept, partly because our must-see site in any city we visit is its grocery store. We don’t want the Food Halls of Harrods or the Great Marketplace of Budapest. We want the Jewel equivalent, because a local grocery store provides clues to everyday life in our home away hometown.

On another visit to the Vrbo homepage, I was soon transfixed with the not-so ordinary hometowns where we could live in the moment—Old Venetian Harbor in Chania, Greece, or Catania, Italy, in a villa at the foot of Mt. Etna (okay, maybe not, with that active volcano thing going on) or the Mayan Riviera in Mexico come mid-February. If I believe Vrbo, my magical HomeAway promises me peace, rest, beauty—all conveniently located.

Convenience is a big selling point on Vrbo just as it is in life. We much prefer the neat and tidy over the messy and out-of-hand be it houses, lawns, people. The smallest detours upset my best laid plans. I want uncomplicated problems and straightforward solutions. What me—suffer?

As Christ-followers, we have an eternal HomeAway and its promises of peace, rest and beauty guaranteed by the One who went ahead to prepare our home for us. The gospel writer John begins chapter 14 with Jesus’ graced words to his disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (v. one) and then comes the better-than-Vrbo promise that “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (vv. two-three)

The only thing left out of Jesus’ promise is convenience. Rather, just the opposite is guaranteed in John 16:33: “In the world you will have tribulation.” That’s the middle sentence of the verse, not the entire verse, but it’s where I live now—located next to tribulations and trouble and inconvenience—and combined with that is the tug to escape to my idyllic HomeAway, however fleeting a stay might be.

Then I reread all of Jesus’ in John 16;33. “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world,” and notice that tribulation sits rather incongruously between peace and take heart. Or perhaps not.

We come from a long line of strangers and exiles seeking a HomeAway, a heavenly one whose designer and builder is God. And all that going about in skins of sheep and goats and being destitute, afflicted and mistreated? (See Hebrews 11.) It would be incongruent if these were absent from Jesus’ peace and loving encouragement to take heart as we make our way home, his own little band who love him, seek him and long to be near him.

"The Master Has Come, and He Calls Us” 
The Master has come, and He calls us to follow
The track of the footprints He leaves on our way;
Far over the mountain and through the deep hollow,
The path leads us on to the mansions of day:
The Master has called us, the children who fear Him,
Who march ‘neath Christ’s banner, His own little band:
We love him and seek Him, we long to be near Him,
And rest in the light of His beautiful land.

So, What About the Dog? by Wil Triggs

The godly care for their animals, but the wicked are always cruel.
Proverbs 12:10 (NLT)
 
Tuesdays Together is this Tuesday night and it’s “bring your pet” night. Mine is coming, but I didn’t always have a pet to bring to anything.
 
I did not grow up with a dog in the house. I liked the idea of a dog but my parents did not want animals. The most I could muster was my brother’s fish aquarium (he was the oldest and bought it himself) or one of those little turtles that years later were reported to harbor disease. I also managed to get my own goldfish by landing a ping pong ball into a little bowl of water at the elementary school carnival. They put the fish in a plastic bag, which I walked home carefully, passing by the other winners whose bags had sprung leaks, goldfish flapping away in the puddles that fell with them from the baggie to the hard and unforgiving concrete. I managed to get mine home alive. Every time there was a school carnival, I always won a goldfish. Every time, the fish died. A few times I would wake up in the morning to discover it floating at the top of the water, no gill action, inert eyes open. I would hope against hope that the fish would revive, but after a few days, my mother “took care of it.” I couldn’t watch, but I knew what that meant—flushing it down the toilet.
 
Over time I accepted that I was not an animal person. A dog was for other people, not me. And when I heard about people struggling with a sick pet or finding care for an animal with an upcoming vacation, or when I saw a pet aggressively licking its owner, or its owner picking up poop from the yard, I felt affirmed. Glad I don’t have to do that. Pets and I were not compatible. This was not for me.
 
My wife grew up with multiple pets in her home. She has stories of the cats Stinky, Ringo and Puff, and Randy the perfect dog. This was a world I did not know. As our son came into the picture, we let him have a hamster and a guinea pig. Cats were not an option because of my allergies. So, the dog was always out there, a sort of holy grail of pet-dom, to which Lorraine and Philip always heard one word from me in response to their pleas: “No.” The certainty of my “no” was something both Lorraine and Philip grew to accept.
 
Until I said yes.
 
How did I go from being a no-dog man to a devoted dad to Sandy and Pongo? It wasn’t that hard really. There was always something, some part of me that wanted a dog, but there were reasons to say no—places to go, things to do, plenty of responsibilities to handle without adding that, but once I did, there was no turning back on this little being looking, licking, depending on me, destroying my shoes but delighted to play with me.
 
Yes, there are responsibilities, vet visits, spills to clean, walks morning and night all year long. But life gets bigger and richer and more fun, too.
 
My whole neighborhood is full of dogs and their owners, each of them as devoted to theirs as I am to mine. Our talking about dogs can sometimes wander over into other areas of life—such as my going to church or working at church or going to Bible study or having a small group over or getting to take my dog to church.
 
When those moments happen, it becomes clear which of these dog-owners is a no-God person.
 
I want my dog friends to somehow become my God friends. Because a creature caring for a creature cannot really compare with a creature being cared for by its Creator. I just know that some of the people I meet on the dog walks are as foreign to a life with God as I used to be about life with a dog or two. I can see it in their eyes or sometimes they say it out loud. I’m not into that. They aren’t God people like I wasn’t a pet person. I know what they’re thinking or more honestly, not thinking at all, until I say something. God is a good thing for some people, but not me. Whatever helps you is great—for you.
 
But a no can become a yes. And things can change.
 
When God comes into my house, I want to be like my dog when I come home. I want to wag my tail, even though I don’t have one. Lick his hand, go for a walk with him, let him feed me, brush my coat, and just sit by me for hours. If I make a mess, and I will, he’s not going to talk about it for weeks on end; I sit away from the place of transgression, he cleans it up and we move on. I forget about it. Back to playing with my orange and blue or lime green ball. I love it when God fills my water bowl. My favorite food is the scraps and crumbs that fall from his table. When the fireworks go off, I run and hide, but he finds me; I can relax when he’s around. He can help me not get ticks, or when I get them, he’ll help me get over them and love me anyway. With practice, I can perform little tricks for him, and he will give me a treat and say something nice about me in a language I can’t exactly understand, but I’m learning. Having him near, knowing that he’s here for me no matter what, well most of the time that’s more than enough, and just about the best there is. It’s a dog’s life for me.
 
The joys and responsibilities of a dog in my life are wonderful, but just a pale shadow of real life connected to the heavenly Father who feeds barn swallows, dresses up lilies of the field, knows the human tendency to anxiousness, and extends the invitation to come, to seek his kingdom first and have everything we need and more.
 
I want that for all my dog friends, too. Somehow, I want to help these neighbor friends discover our loving owner, God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

The Quality of Mercy by Lorraine Triggs

My son and his friend were wrestling as ten-year-old boys are prone to do. I paid no mind, until I heard one of them yell, “Mercy!” And the other respond, “Show no mercy!” Were they ever surprised when I interrupted their play with a motherly theological lecture about mercy. Fortunately for the boys, I refrained from quoting William Shakespeare, “The quality of mercy is not strained, so knock it off, guys.”

That familiar line is from Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice. In his book The Soul in Paraphrase, Leland Ryken notes that this phrase about mercy means that it cannot be forced. In the play’s context, Ryken says, “This speech uttered by Shakespeare's fictional heroine Portia occurs in the famous trial scene in act 4, scene 1, of The Merchant of Venice. The context is that the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock has dragged his debtor Antonio into court and is pursuing an attempted murder of him based on a contract that Antonio had signed. Portia, in the guise of a trial lawyer, utters her speech in an attempt to dissuade Shylock from his attempted murder and to persuade him to show mercy instead. Immediately preceding the speech, Shylock had asked scornfully 'on what compulsion' he must show mercy as Portia had claimed in the words 'then must the Jew be merciful.' The opening line of Portia's speech is a reply to that immediate question.”

A few lines later, Portia declares that mercy
“’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.”

I thought of another king when I read these lines, not a Shakespearean king, but the one after God’s own heart, David. In 2 Samuel 12, David got more than a Portia reminding him that the quality of mercy is not strained. He got Nathan, sent by the Lord. After Nathan’s story about the rich man taking the poor man’s one little ewe, David exploded. That man deserves to die—no mercy. Then came Nathan’s stinging pronouncement, “You are the man!” The king’s crown had slipped, and now he was the one who needed mercy. David needed someone greater than himself to show him unrestrained mercy.

He found the One. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!” (Psalm 51:1-2) And if David were to forget why he needed God’s abundant mercy, Psalm 51 is attributed to “the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after had gone into Bathsheba.”

I don’t have a crown that keeps slipping or a psalm attributed to any of my many sins (a huge mercy in and of itself), but I come to the same One who abounds in mercy and lovingkindness. I come to the God, who proclaimed his name to Abraham as “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” And I come to Zechariah’s God, who "gives knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:77-79)

I come just as I am.

The boyhood game of "Show no mercy!" showed the human perspective on mercy: don't show it. But for people in power, the showing of mercy is something that makes a person great. Mercy is at the very heart of God. As his children, we are to be people of mercy.

Back to Shakespeare and one more note from Ryken’s selected words. It’s the word “become” that means appropriate or fitting. Portia's point was that mercy is more appropriate or fitting for a ruler than his very crown. Unless, I might add, when the crown is composed of thorns.

Dots, Lines, Circles . . . Eternal Life By Wil Triggs

I like to read book reviews. Sometimes these reviews are more about the writer of the review than they are about the writer of the book being reviewed. Still, if it’s a well-written review, for me at least, it’s worth reading. But most reviews, like most books, don’t stand the test of time.
 
But William Tyndale and Thomas More, back in the 1500s—their words survive.
 
When William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English, it was a struggle. He had to invent new words to express truths for which English, at the time, did not have just the right word he was looking for. So, the translation itself was a challenge. Then, he had to figure out how to get it printed.
 
He journeyed around Germany--Hamburg, Wittenberg, Cologne, Worms. His goal was the whole Bible in English. But the New Testament was his first step. At last, his translation of the New Testament was completed in 1525. Sir Thomas More wrote this in his review: "not worthy to be called Christ's testament, but either Tyndale's own testament or the testament of his master Antichrist."
 
Eleven years later, Tyndale was condemned as a heretic, strangled and burned at the stake.
 
Something or someone got ahold of William Tyndale, and he determined to get the Bible into English and into the hands of English-speaking people. He persevered in his translation and publishing efforts and years after his death, his work became the basis for future English-language Bibles.
 
We may think of England today as a Christian or post-Christian nation, but in Tyndale’s time, it was not a welcome place for the English Bible. Though not a life-threatening project exactly, a man in College Church is persevering in his own way for his own people in a land that is less-than-welcoming to his Christian work.
 
Imagine a boy in a Muslim-majority country waking each morning to the Muslim call to prayer. He sits up and at the same time, hears his father singing Christian psalms in their native tongue. The boy wonders how his father learned such songs, where did they come from?
 
The man is not William Tyndale, but Yousaf Sadiq and the country is not England, but Pakistan. The book is not the Bible, but The Contextualized Psalms: A precious heritage of the global Punjabi Christian community.
 
Over time, Yousaf discovered the prayer songs his father sang were Punjabi-language psalms native to this land and passed down orally from generation to generation. He began to write them down, along with a history of how they came to be. They are a core part of every branch of Christian churches in Pujabi-language worship. Yet cultural shifts mean the preferred language for many is Urdu or English. “Punjabi is my mother-tongue,” Yousaf told me. “As I studied how these psalms came to be, I began to see who I was as both a Christian and a person.”
 
Now, a citizen of the U.S., Yousaf is a member of College Church and on the Board of Missions. And Yousaf’s updated history of the Punjabi psalms and his translation of these psalms are being published in Punjabi this summer. He and his wife, Ruth, are actually traveling to South Asia to meet with the publisher and make different churches and ministries aware of this new book.
 
Both Tyndale and Sadiq worked in the context of persecution to bring word truths to their people. Language mattered to both.
 
Have you ever considered the miracle of written language, what a gift from God is language. How we moved from people without language to where we are today.
 
Think of how little dots and lines and circles arranged in a certain way make up letters and then how those letters arranged in particular orders become words that represent both things and thoughts. We become so accustomed to language that we forget how amazing it is that we can communicate with one another using letters, words, sentences, paragraphs. Words matter more than we realize…Tyndale created new words in his work to bring to life the Bible and the psalms; Yousaf's work can bring a persecuted people together in worship like no other words or writing in his homeland.

Whether it’s Greek, Hebrew, Punjabi, English or another language, words point us toward God or away from him. We have the privilege and ability to use words this day in ways that could cause harm or in ways that God might use to bring people to Christ.
 
We all have words, spoken or written, that we can use to express truth and love. We are all messengers of eternal life. Let's choose our words with great care. Let's not keep the words of life to ourselves but speak them and write them as we can to those around us.

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68b-69)

Voice Recognition by Lorraine Triggs

Had my father lived to see this digital age of ours, he would have been hooked just as his daughter is. Now, my mother? Not so much. She relied more on face-to-face than FaceTime for her communication. As a college student, I came to value her reliance on the face-to-face.

We were a one-car family that operated on the principle that if you wanted the car for fun and someone else needed to be somewhere else, then you had to take the other person to wherever and pick her up from the same said place on time and without complaint. That principle explained why, one summer, I woke up every morning at 5:20 to take my mom to work. As part of the facilities crew at our church, her shift started at 5:30 and I was forever thankful for our very local church.

Our routine was simple: pull up in front of the main glass doors of church, a quick I-love-you-have-a-good-day-be-careful goodbye, wait until my mom clocked in and returned to the doors to wave me on my way, leave. I was usually home by 5:40 a.m.

Except for the day my mom was taking longer than usual to come to the doors. I turned the car off and closed my eyes until a bright light shined into the car. It was one of the city’s finest shining his flashlight into the car.

License, please?

Uh. My license? I just rolled out of bed to take my mom to work.

No license? Why are you here?

The conversation went back and forth. I kept glancing at the door, hoping to see my mother waving me on my way. No such luck. Then just as I envisioned my college career coming to a screeching halt, my mom was there at the doors, waving to me.

“Mom,” I shouted. “Tell the policeman who I am.”

Mom opened the door and called out, “What did you say, honey?”

Instantly, both the officer and I relaxed.

Now that my identity had been established, I learned that an alarm had been tripped in the church that sent the police to the scene, at the same time that my mother was calling her supervisor. Think how quickly all this could have been resolved with a simple text to two, but all it took for the police was my mother’s voice responding to my voice.

The gospel writers show us wind and raging waves responding to Jesus’ voice in Luke 8:23-25. They show an unclean spirit, who said his name was Legion, for he was many in Mark 5:1-13. Then there’s Lazarus who responded to Jesus’ loud voice, “Come out” in John 11. So, wind and waves, an unclean spirit, a dead man—all obeyed his voice.

And then there’s Jesus’ followers who question that voice. The disciples who sat in the boat in a calm sea, asked who this Jesus was that “he commands even winds and water and they obey him.” (v. 25). In Mark 5, the people in the region who saw the formerly demon-possessed man in his right mind, begged Jesus to leave the area. And Martha warned Jesus about the odor because her brother had been dead four days. They questioned the voice that wind, waves, demons and death obeyed.

I’m not sure that I  question Jesus’ voice as much as I like to drown it out with competing voices that promise something that poses as abundant life here and now, especially when the here and now is weighted with burdens and cares. When that happens, I need to hear Jesus' voice again, calling me by name, reassuring me that I am a sheep of his pasture. 

In Luke 23:46, Jesus calls out in a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!"

There is no other voice. Jesus goes before me. He lays down his life. He promises me abundant life in him alone. His voice brings grace and truth and mercy, finishing the work only he could do. So I join the storm, the spirits and the dead man in hearing and knowing and obeying his voice that gives me strength and courage and grace to face this and every other day he gives.

Real Life Parable of the Sower by Wil Triggs

Thanks to everyone who served at our Cream of Wheaton display last weekend. Thanks, too, to 10ofthose, Crossway and Tyndale for keeping us supplied with Bibles and Bible story books that we gave away.
 
There is an image that stays with me from this last weekend—it’s of carefree kids spotting our display and running/skipping over to the games. Let’s play. Let’s have fun. It happened over and over.
 
Cream of Wheaton is a city-wide party that runs for four days in and around Memorial Park. Companies have displays at the park, most of them about some kind of life improvement—places like fitness clubs, remodeling contractors, home improvement companies like window/doors/bath specialists and a cancer care group, Peoples Resource Center (our neighbor for the weekend) and College Church.
 
And there’s John Garvin, a College Church member who has been looking forward to giving away oversized balloons by our display. His balloons draw kids especially over to our area, sometimes with parents and sometimes just on their own.
 
While the kids wait for their balloons, they play the games Kids' Harbor sent over with us—a giant Connect Four, a Ring Toss, Bozo Bucket style Beanbag Toss. Sometimes kids make multiple visits.
 
One girl came by. I’m guessing she was in third grade. She was happy with her balloon and then looked at our table. More than candy, she wanted the Ken Taylor Bible stories book. Her eyes lit up. A few minutes later, she came back, this time with her brother. He looked a little older, maybe fifth grade.
 
“Can I have a Bible, too?” he asked me. We offered him the same book as his sister. He looked at the other ones on our table. “Can I have a whole adult Bible, with the whole thing?”

"Of course," I said. He looked at a few different ones and chose a basic hardback Bible, kind of like our pew Bibles. “I want to read it to my dad every night.”
 
There was something in the way he said this that broke a little bit of my heart. He wanted to help his dad, so he wanted to read the Bible with him. Every night. I’m praying for this boy and his dad.
 
But this image took me back many years, not to a son, but to a dad. Not to America, but to Russia. Not to Memorial Park, but to a slightly ramshackle Soviet-built school turned into a makeshift summer camp. Classrooms were turned into sleeping quarters. The small gym was our meeting room and craft room. The kids were starting to arrive.
 
Vans from different churches were bringing their kids. A man drove up in a small car with his son. Everyone was talking about this first-ever camp. A church camp, unthinkable just a few years before. Growing up Soviet meant that he didn’t think he could believe in God, but he brought his son, maybe he could believe. So, he just drove to us with his son and a friend. “Can you take them for the week?” he pleaded. No one among the camp workers had every met him before. "Of course," our Russian camp believers replied. Cars continued to show up, one by one, “Can you let our boy or girl into your camp?”
 
The Russian camp staff vacated their classrooms and pitched tents outside to make room for the extra kids, doing everything to make room for as many children as possible.
 
Decades later, Lorraine in the Wheaton park says, “Everything on our table is free because the best gift ever—the gift of Jesus—is free.”
 
I think about these seeds in different soils around the world. One dad wants to help his son believe in God. One son wants to read the Bible with his dad every night. I know I’ll probably never know until heaven what happened to these fathers and children, 
 
God’s rich love reaches out in every direction, in ways we might not choose, to people we don’t know—unqualified, undeserving, like us. Times of joy, love, peace, war, richness, poverty—the Word flies through the air from the loving hand of the Sower, landing on soil, settling into hearts, taking root, and even though we may not know how soft the heart or fertile the soil, the Sower knows, cares and loves.
 
The Father gives us his Son so we can sow the good news in unexpected soils that grow a harvest of righteousness.

Oh, Scarred Heart Now Wounded by Lorraine Triggs

Any self-respecting resident of South Kenwood Avenue under the age of 12 wore his or her playground scars with pride. If you had scars from stitches, all the better, but if you had neither stitches nor scars, you could always painstakingly paint them on a knee or shin with the popular antiseptic Mercurochrome, its dark red ointment staining the skin.

I thought of this one Sunday when five-year-old Grace and I bonded over Band-Aids. She held up her right hand with a Band-Aid on her pointer finger, and I held up my left hand with a Band-Aid on my pointer finger. I don’t know how Grace hurt her finger. I added another scar to my hands when I was pruning lavender. I was being so careful not to cut into the woody stems that I chose to cut my finger instead. It’s a so-so South Kenwood-worthy scar since it didn't require stitches.

On that Monday, my oldest sister—whose age will remain undisclosed—and I bonded over deeper wounds than childhood scars. Soon this latest wound of hers will take a physical toll on her body, but not her heart. That remains steadfast, even though her and her husband’s hearts carry scars from adult children publicly disavowing Christianity, from disappointment of an abrupt end to a missionary career, and from family members who receive but never give.

The next day, Susan and I bonded over wounds that don’t ever seem to heal as year after year their pain is etched into our hearts and souls. And mine would threaten to bleed over save for Susan’s gentle words of grace and calm.

There is a temptation to dress our wounds so well that no one would ever know they were there. To be sure, some heart wounds can carry lessons in discernment and over-talking, but perhaps we need to unlearn lessons of self-reliance or misplaced confidence in position and power that give the illusion we are immune to heart wounds, that pain never infringes on our well-ordered lives.

In high school, my friends and I would sing “I Am a Rock” by Paul Simon with all the pathos and drama that only teenage girls could muster.

The closing lyrics of the song are:
I am a rock
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries.
 
There are days we resemble Paul Simon’s rock, and when we do, we need to recall the rock David describes in Psalm 18:2 who is our fortress, deliverer, refuge, salvation and stronghold. 

We also need to see Jesus, a magnet for the wounded. Matthew describes great crowds coming to Jesus, “bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them, so that the crowd wondered, when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel.” (Matthew 15:30, 31)

We come to Jesus with our wounded and scarred hearts because he came for the sick and lost, not the healthy and those who have arrived. We come because his grace and lovingkindness keep us safe. We come singing the lyrics of another song, written long ago:

O sacred head now wounded
With grief and shame weighed down
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns thine only crown
How pale Thou art with anguish
With sore abuse and scorn
How does that visage languish
Which once was bright as morn

What thou, my Lord, hast suffered
Was all for sinners' gain
Oh mine was the transgression
But thine the deadly pain
Lo, here I fall, my Savior
'Tis I deserve thy place
Look on me with thy favor
Vouchsafe to me thy grace

What language shall I borrow
To thank thee, dearest Friend
For this, thy dying sorrow
Thy pity without end?
Oh, make me thine forever
And should I fainting be
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love to thee.

We come because by his wounds we are healed.

A Morning Prayer

From A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Majestic God, who extends mercy,
We acknowledge your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
as our only Savior, the Preeminent One.
He is the Creator of the earth
and all that lies therein.
He is the governor of the universe,
Judge of the living and the dead,
Head of the church,
Savior of sinners.

Sovereign Lord, your greatness is unsearchable.
Your goodness is infinite.
Your compassion unfailing.
Your mercies, ever new.
You are altogether lovely—superior in all things.
You are our only refuge,
our only foundation,
our only hope,
our only confidence.

Grant us, in our brokenness and fear,
to gather courage from the fact that you hold all things together.
Open our eyes to see the fullness of your excellence.
Remove the lopsided and distorted images of Jesus
that weaken our worship
and hinder our obedience
and prevent our growth.
We try to shoehorn our desires and wishes into circumstances and attitudes
that are ill-fitting to those who claim your sovereignty.
We are afraid to let go of that which we mistakenly think we control for fear
everything will fall apart—
when in reality, you, the supreme One, hold all things together.

Help us to grow in the knowledge and conviction of your preeminence,
letting you take reign—
in our home,
in our business,
in our plans,
in all our relationships.

We pray, O Lord, that as we confess our sins,
your wonderful forgiveness will wash over us,
cleansing from all righteousness.

Thank you, Lord Jesus.
Amen.