Prayers Ancient and Modern 08/28

“A Christian woman’s true freedom lies on the other side of a very small gate—humble obedience—but that gate leads out into a largeness of life undreamed of by the liberators of the world, to a place where the God-given differentiation between the sexes is not obfuscated but celebrated, where our inequalities are seen as essential to the image of God, for it is in male and female, in male as male and female as female, not as two identical and interchangeable halves, that the image is manifested.” – Elisabeth Elliot

Published July 28, 2016 |

O Lord, I fling myself with all my weakness and misery into Thy ever-open arms. I know that I am ignorant and much mistaken about myself. Thou, who seest in very truth, look mercifully on me. Lay Thy healing hand upon my wounds. Pour the life-giving balm of Thy love into my heart. Do for me what I have not the courage to do for myself. Save me in spite of myself. May I be Thine; wholly Thine, and, at all costs, Thine. In humiliation, in poverty, in suffering, in self-abnegation, Thine. Thine in the way Thou knowest to be most fitting, in order that Thou mightest be now and ever mine. Thou art my Strength and my Redeemer. I am Thy poor little creature, dependent on Thy merciful charity alone—Amen.

Père Besson (1816–1861).