All around us is loss.
Our old world is daily diminished before our very eyes.
We weep over our losses
the way in which Jesus wept over lost Jerusalem.
We grieve over 9/11
and th loss of our certitude,
the expose of our vulnerability,
the forfeiture of our entitlement,
the collapse of our security,
the failure of our privilege.
We are overwhelmed
about how deep
and how broad is the loss for those of us
who have been so well situated
that we thought "it could never happen here."
The loss causes us to be sad ... and angry ... and anxious.
And the more we measure
and calculate
and feel the threat of newness,
the deeper is our sadness,
the wider is our anger,
the longer is our anxiety.
Envelop us in the tears you must surely shed over our world that is gone.
Give us freedom, amid such loss,
to stand with you
as you grace this world with your presence.
You are the Friday God of death.
So give us courage and chutzpah
to be honest in our grief
and to reckon that you are in the midst of it
and perhaps the cause of it.
Receive our grief and go there with us,
perhaps there to conjure newness for us
that we cannot imagine for ourselves.
W
alter Brueggemann, Cincinnati, 2011
[reproduced from Embracing the Prophets in Contemporary Culture]
