A Birthday Prayer

Lord, you have blessed me with more human years
than you even blessed yourself with
My forty years are a mere shadow to your timeless self
But in your 33 human years you changed to course of humanity
Steering all of us from death to eternal life.
Embracing our lives unto our death.

My prayer today is a simple one
From my simple self
A prayer of gratitude and grace
A Noticing of your presence for forty years

For forty years I have felt
Your nearness in your world of distance
My longing for you to be visible in your invisibility
My desire for you to be tangible in your mystery
And yet you are closer to me
Than the breath of my very life
And the pulse of my heart
beating with the rhythm of life that you have graced to me.

Through the love of a wife who brings me your grace
Family that nurtured me into adulthood
Friends who support me and colleagues who challenge me
Through it all you remain hidden within those interactions
and often paradoxically all too easy to find.

Lord, you often call me to places that I'd rather not go
To people I'd rather not see.
I shuddered in your face in the ramshackle house of Nicaragua
where poverty deprives others of a life I often take for granted.

I see your face in the young, who often do not know or trust
That you are all they need.
The chaos engulfs their desires for security and community
where they long for peace and contemplation--
and ease in a world of dis-ease

To do your work I need to know that in fact,
the love of these brings me to better know myself
and more importantly to know and see you
within the very breath of life--mine and theirs.

Even in the least of your creatures,
I am reminded of your care for me
In the warmth of the puppy dog on my lap
with his slurps and barks and love of simply being.

Truly being alive means seeing grace.
Truly being alive means loving those whom I meet.
Truly being alive means loving my love, Marion
Who graces me with a love beyond my comprehension
a love that again easily brings me to see you in her.

Today I am alive and am filled
beyond belief with the grandeur
that is God's love
And it has been more than enough for forty years...

And it will be more than enough...
forever and ever. Amen.