This is my Prayer

This evening Titus, Travis, Chad and I met together in a little coffee shop just beside Hapjeong Station. I do so enjoy the warm coziness of a coffee shop! … my fingers have been resting motionless for several minutes between that last sentence and this. If there's one thing I take satisfaction in, it's the ability to communicate via writing how I think and feel with a fair amount of accuracy. But here my colliding thoughts defy prose. Several years ago I wrote a poem:


"This is my Prayer"

This is my prayer, my Master, King:
To know the life of Christ in me.
Can mortal man discern Your heart?
Of this, then, let me have a part!
With second best I cannot be
Content to live.

But one accord with You, my God,
Is hope beyond this human clutch.
My spans of sin I cannot breech.
Your righteous heights I cannot reach.
Your perfect will I cannot touch
With my own hands.

As You love, You must reach down
Into this pit of living shame!
Come free me from deception's art,
And share with me Your weeping heart,
And grant to me to bear Your name
In holy fear.

To know You and be known as Yours!
Is this naught but a foolish dream?
A thousand times my cry is Nay!
Oh, let me taste of what I pray:
This fellowship of suffering
That you desire.

What pain! Partaking of Your death!
Broken, crushed, refined until
My heart in grief to You has flown,
And I have ceased to be my own,
But Yours to move and use at will,
And in Your time.

Burn me with Your cleansing fire.
Consume me with Yourself, my Lord!
For love, demand I die to me
And live for You, that I might be
Bound to Your grief with love's own chord,
And know Your joy.

My all surrendered full to You:
Oh bliss! Oh all consuming grace!
My life compelled by this alone:
The love and agony You've known.
What moves Your heart shall I embrace
With grateful tears.

This is my prayer: My Master, King:
Proclaim through me this dulcet tune,
"Come praise Him, all ye myriad lands!"
Then let me live to be Your hands,
And gladly I will bear the wounds
That pierced Your own.


On Wednesday God rekindled this passion.