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Musings on Faith #46 A Prayer of Contrition | |
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"Teach me, O Lord, to follow your decrees; then I will keep them to the end. Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart. Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. Turn my heart toward your statutes, and not toward selfish gain. Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.Fulfill your promise to your servant, so that you may be feared. Take away the disgrace I dread, for your laws are good. How I long for your precepts! Preserve my life in your righteousness (Psalm 119:33-40, NIV).” In reading this passage of Scripture, it occurred to me that this is a mighty prayer of contrition and repentance for us in this present day wherein we are beset and engulfed in an atmosphere of worldly greed, avarice, lies, fraud, and deception, but more importantly, in this age of a turning away from God in our society. Oh, we give lip service to God, as do our national leaders in Washington, but our actions as a Nation and a people speak louder than our words. Where is the sense of sacrifice? Huge corporations are laying off tens of thousands of workers, so that their top executives can continue to draw their obscenely profane salaries and bonuses. Workers are worried only about their own jobs, and not the job of the person sitting or standing next to them in the company. We worship athletes who make millions of dollars |
a year doing something they love to do, while people are losing their homes, and their hope. Everyone wants the government to come to the rescue, but few indeed are willing to make personal sacrifices. We must ask ourselves, before criticizing others, whether we are willing to do that which needs to be done, and to sacrifice to make it happen. Are we Christians truly ready to be Good Samaritans? Or are we so caught up in our own comfort zones that we prefer to turn a blind eye, or to blame it all on someone else?
It is time for repentance, and also for an awakening: Our government is bankrupt and our leaders seemingly without a moral compass or intestinal fortitude. I cannot find it in my Bible where it says for us to look to the government to come to our rescue. Our deliverance is in the Lord, but He expects us to step up and be counted also, in charity, in love, in mutual sacrifice. A few days ago I saw where a mid-sized company needed to cut corners. Instead of laying off a few thousand workers, the management called a meeting of all the people in that company, from top to bottom. They forged an agreement whereby everyone in the company, from CEO to janitors, took a twenty percent pay cut, so that none of them would lose their jobs. This is what I’m talking about. This is the kind of sacrifice which God expects of us all. Yours in Christ, Tom Woodard |
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