A Chaos of Uncalculating Love

A prayer by L. Zoe Cole for the Colorado Deputation, July 5

Each day, the Colorado deputation gathers for prayer and discussion. One of the deputies serves as chaplain for the day and offers a reflection. We will post them each day.

We are living in a changing day, Lord;

all the old rules and regulations for living

are slithering to the ground.

And You lived in a changing day, Lord:

all the old rules and regulations of the scribes and Pharisees

were slithering to the ground.

But it was Your custom to go to the temple:

to the noisome temple

sometime to the scandalized temple

listening to the mumbo jumbo,

but it was Your custom to go

till the new temple of Your body was available for men.

Give us your grace in our changing day

To stand by the temple that is the present church.

The noisome temple

the sometime scandalized temple

that is the present church,

listening sometime to what again seems mumbo jumbo.

Make it our custom to go

till the new outline of Your Body for our day

becomes visible in our midst.

In the temple You healed, Lord Christ:

despite the noise and scandal, You healed.

And we are Your body even today.

You have no hands but our hands

no feet but our feet

ours are the eyes with which You look out

compassionate on the world.

You have ordained that You just don’t come

except through us.

Give us faith in great healings

despite the noise and scandal of our modern dimness.

Your grace and power are such:

none can ever ask too much.

Heal again, even through us,

for so You have ordained:

till the new outline of Your body

becomes visible in our midst.

In the temple You threw out the money changers, Lord Christ:

down the steps and out of the door –

 and into the vacant aisles came the children

shouting for joy and dancing round.

Too often we are the money changers:

giving short change in spiritual things

to many who seek the true coin:

making the Church an institute

when you want it to be a chaos of uncalculating love.

Drive out from out hearts

our calculated offerings,

our easy responses,

and let child-like faith

flood into us again.

Grant us such abandon, of Your grace alone,

that we too shall be made strong

to go outside the city wall

outside holiness

and die in the bloody mess of another Calvary

that the Church at home may live again.