Lenten Prayer

from Thomas Merton:

Take my life into Your hands, at last, and do whatever You want with it. I give myself to Your love and mean to keep on giving myself to Your love- rejecting neither the hard things nor the pleasant things You have arranged for me. It is enough for me that You have glory. Everything You have planned is good. It is all love.

If You allow people to praise me, I shall not worry. If you let them blame me, I shall worry even less, but be glad. If You send me work, I shall embrace it with joy and it will be rest to me, because it is Your will. if You send me rest, I will rest in You. Only save me from myself. Save me from my own private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move for movement’s sake, to unsettle everything that You have ordained.

Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. It's fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory. That is what I live for.

Amen.

-my prayer response - O God, help me to live in the spot of indifference that I hear resonating within Merton’s prayer. I can’t do this by my strength but by You, Holy Spirit. Come, enliven me, move me to love you more and rest in Your love more and more each moment today.