With the world as seemingly lackluster as it is these days, my heart felt the need to pray this. This is a prayer (with some modification for publishing and privacy concerns) I am promising to myself and to God every day of this year, as I seek to regain the walking with God in the Garden of Eden. I’m tired and worn by the utilitarian church and westernized Christianity. I’m tired of the boring. I am longing, longing, longing, for wonder, for beauty. Where has the Good, the True, and the Beautiful gone? And so, I pray earnestly for my cry to ring in Heaven as I search out this year for freedom and a heart’s tread that goes lightly.
Jesus, I offer this prayer to you, a prayer of living freely and lightly. It is my offering up of my expectations and deepest desires. You hold them all for me, in the palm of your hand, for they are too heavy a weight to carry alone. I offer up what I hold most dear. This is my heart to your heart, Jesus. It’s the accepting the posture that life will not always flow in the direction I desire it to go. It is the acknowledgment that control over what happens in my life is limited to my reactions and responses. I offer my soul in rest to you. You are where I can find rest for my whole being.Your yoke is easy, and your burden light. I relinquish my rest depending on outcomes. Instead, I anticipate and hope for what you will do, whilst my soul abides in you. Lord, grant me the eyes to see and the ears to hear your weighty beauty. Please slow me down to gasp at the wonder that surrounds me, that are all reflections of you. Jesus, let my anthem ring out in the midst of the storm, in the great wilderness, and the mountain peaks, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts.” Let my heart not forget how you hold me. That my heart is restless until it finds its rest in you. Today, let me walk once more with you in the Garden.
