I must confess, God, that gratitude’s serenity has been hard to hear these last months. There is so much to distract us. We are still recovering from drought, fire, and flood. We still grieve our dead, our national resolve, and our sense of hope for the future. We have a growing sense of how we have dehumanized your children, especially ones who do not look like us, act like us, or love like us.
With all of that going on, how can we simply be grateful? How can we welcome the story of your incarnation in a deeper way than simply as a distraction from current events?
Breath of God, still us and fill us so we might hear and see the wonder all around us, even in the broken places, even in the grief, even when it’s hard. Call us into the messes we make and teach us to heal – ourselves, our neighbors, and our world. We ask this in gratitude. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This message is excerpted from “A gratitude season” by Catherine Malotky in the November/December 2021 Gather magazine.
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