92: A Prayer for Soul-Healing {Psalm 51}
Today, as we continue to settle into the season of Lent, I want to share a prayer based on Psalm 51. This prayer was written by Jerry Webber, founder of The Center for Christian Spirituality in Houston, TX. I found this prayer in a book called Sometimes an Unknown Path. Unfortunately, I think the book is out of print, but I’ll still link to it in the show notes in case you’d like to try to find a used copy!
Psalm 51 is the psalm with the familiar line, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” It’s a psalm that confronts our sin, our shortcomings, and all that might keep us from loving God and others well. The truth is, we often avoid talking about these sorts of things. But by acknowledging our sin and the ways we fall short, we welcome God’s forgiveness, healing, and unconditional love. In recognizing our need and removing what blocks, the Spirit of God is better able to flow through us into the world around us.
So, assured of God’s unfailing love, here’s to saying what might be hard to say, and doing what might be hard to do. As always, I hope this prayer serves you well.
Mercy me, dear God.
Mercy me in Your unending love.
I cast myself on Your mercy and upon Your willingness to pardon my indebtedness…
To You, my fellow humans, and the [earth].
I owe to each more than I could ever repay.
I’ve presumed to act out of my own self-interest.
My indebtedness outweighs my capacity to repay.
Some of my sin I know and some I can’t even see.
But You see it all
And in those moments when I turn away from You to my own self-fulfillment,
I recognize full well how firmly my self is at the center of my life.
I’ve turned aside from You.
I’ve sought from another source what only flows from the Source.
I have no grounds to stand on, no way of explaining away my actions.
Besides, You see what lives inside me much more clearly than I do.
You’ve seen all along how self-serving I am,
How my pride and greed control me,
No different from the rest of the [human] race.
Surely I have been descended from father Adam and mother Eve.
My sin is my own, yet held in common by our [human] race.
The twisted jumble of motives and urges to control are closeted so deeply within me,
Hidden so thoroughly from my own eyes,
So much a part of my own darkness,
That I could never see them, much less identify them, on my own.
Shine the searchlight of Your love into every corner and crevice, crack and closet of my life,
Until my inner darkness is named for what it is and brought to Your healing light.
Bathe me in that healing light.
Change the landscape of my heart, the way a snowstorm changes the landscape, alters the terrain.
Rather than the pain caused by self-centeredness, bring joy and gladness to the world from my healed heart.
Don’t hold my sin against me.
Look on the person You’ve created me to be, not the ways I’ve misspent myself.
Rebuild my heart; don’t throw me away.
Deconstruct these ingrained patterns of control, greed, and anger, and rebuild in their stead a life of love, that is connected soul to soul with every created thing…
Rescue me from falsehood and lies; Give me new ears for truth.
Give me the joy to celebrate with those who celebrate,
And the tenderness to weep with those in pain,
And the strength to place one foot in front of the other,
So that I can walk with others,
Each of us walking the path on which You’ve placed us, each of us becoming into You.
For the longest time I thought You wanted penances and sacrifices,
All sorts of austere disciplines, the more the better.
I’ve spent too many days playing the game of trying to be worthy of Your love, then failing that,
Trying to appear worthy of Your love.
I’ve given that up.
I realize now that there is nothing I can do to get more of Your love.
And there’s nothing I can do to get less of Your love.
Your love doesn’t depend on me, but comes at Your free initiative out of Your generative heart of self-giving.
I can’t buy Your love with wealth or image, status or asceticism.
What You’re asking of me is to give You my broken and wounded heart.
What You really want is my openness to Your healing work of love, so that my prideful, self-centeredness finds its reference point, not in my self but in You.
So today that is what I bring You…
My wounded heart,
My finite mind,
My shattered spirit,
My caged soul,
My never-enough strength.
This is all I have to give.
I hear again today that this is all You want.
So take me as I am.
Call forth from me what and who You’ve created me to be.
Rebuild my heart as a mason would rebuild a fragile wall.
Stone by stone, brick by brick, mortar a new life in me,
So that my life mirrors the One who created me, and sustains me, and redeems me, and heals me;
So that my life in the world is spent for others in the name of the One Who Sent me.
Amen.