Grief in the Serving

There should be a name for this grief, the grief of watching the faith that raised you trade away its own soul.

The grief of watching the church that taught you

to love your neighbor,

to care for the vulnerable,

to seek justice and walk humbly with God, lay all of it down at the altar of political power.

And then, as if that were not wounding enough,

to watch that same faith turn on you,

to call your grief betrayal,

to name your love disloyalty,

to exile you for daring to hold onto

what it once taught you to treasure.

This is the grief of spiritual homelessness.

This is the grief of seeing the place that promised to be a refuge become a marketplace of power and fear.

The grief of being cast out by those who once called you family.

The grief of watching those who taught you about integrity and character be silent in the face of injustice.

Jesus, where do we bring this sorrow?

Where do we take a grief with no name?

We bring it to You.

The One who was also abandoned,

The One betrayed with a kiss,

The One who wept over Jerusalem when it no longer recognized the things that make for peace.

Hold us in this nameless grief.

Remind us that You are still faithful even when Your church is not.

Gather up the exiles,

bind up the abandoned,

and teach us again how to walk in love.

Until the day the church remembers its first love,

if it ever comes, may our lament become our prayer: Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

(A prayer I saved but cannot find the authors name – their words lifted my Spirit as I prayed)