Other times, Lord, my mouth mumbles the words of a prayer while my mind and heart are far away, caught up in sorrow and worry. My words say one thing, while my mind and heart are crying out "God, You're not listening to me! Where are You? Why is this happening?"
Please help me, God, to keep praying heart to heart!
Your heart is so much greater than my heart. The plans of Your heart last from age to age into eternity. Your heart is full of unfathomable love and mercy.
But I don't always trust Your heart, God. My heart is small, sad, limited to what I see and hear and know right now - this loved one is sick, this one is dying. This loved one is lost to addiction; another one is just plain lost. I can't get through this trial, I don't have the strength. I don't have any support.
When my heart is shuddering and shaking, bowed down, how can I find Your heart?
All I can ask is, Open my heart! Open my heart to Your Light. Your mercy. Your wisdom.
Open my heart to trust that if I love myself, You love me more than a million times more. If I love these people in my life, You care for their welfare more than a million times more than I do.
Help me trust that if You do not take away these trials, it's for a purpose of Your heart that is beyond my knowledge and understanding, but is undeniably real. You are always strengthening our hearts, molding us, transforming us into the people You know we are meant to be.
The vision of Your heart for us, Your heart's dreams for us, are beautiful, mysterious, overwhelming if we only knew them. Sometimes the way for these visions and dreams for us to happen means suffering for us.
Open our hearts to let suffering in, to allow it to change us for the better.
If we truly see into Your heart, we see it is pierced for love of us. Once our hearts are open, pierced, all your Love, Beauty, and Mercy for the entire world can pour into us. And we are both broken open and whole.
Amen. Let it be so for me. Let it be done to me according to the heart-felt power of Your Word.