His Body

Father, the Body of Christ is broken. The old are angry with the young, the persecuted are forgotten in their nations and children are ignored when they’re kidnapped and married off or forced into military service. Husbands and wives have lost, or maybe never learned how to communicate with transparency and grace and marriages are crumbling. When a marriage is lost, your people spew poison on already raw, bleeding hearts. The old are silenced, tossed aside like a rotting bag of produce that we’d just rather not deal with. The depressed suffer alone, and the frightened are rebuked for their inability to trust You. The sick and disabled are condemned for their “lack of faith.” Ambition is slammed against the wall. Those who are faithful to the truth have their voice knocked out of them by stubborn self-righteous. Bitter distaste fills our mouths for others solely on the basis of our ancestry, and it comes out in mindless rants. Compassion is spurned as weakness and compromise. We’re spiritually stoning each other.

…and You draw in the sand. You wait for us to listen. When we finally do, You ask us who among us has no sin. Then you stretch out your own arms and willingly lay them on a cross. You submit to the nails, offering up Your broken body as a sacrifice for our sin in order to reconcile us to God and make us one body. Oh, Lord, heal our hearts. We’re so tempted to become discouraged and bitter. You gave everything; teach us that sacrificial love that will forgive, that will show mercy and grace in the very spaces that hurt the most deeply. You said that the world would know we are Your disciples if we have love one for another. We don’t. We’re too busy with our own agendas and preconceived notions about what the Body of Christ should look like. If we disagree on that vision, at least one of us is wrong; maybe all of us. Teach us to be the Body of Christ. Bring that abundant life that you offer. Make our interactions with each other a message of grace to a lost and dying world.