A World Addressed

From Walter Brueggemann’s Prayers for a Privileged People, in the midst of a week where dreams, possibilities, and disequilibrium are on our minds—in the midst of a week where we are reminded of God’s strange and beautiful address:

You we name as Lord, Sovereign King.  You we confess governor over nations, empires, and kingdoms.  You in your holiness remain hidden, evoking our extravagant doxologies.

Your rule draws close and visible among us when we see new possibilities break out, or watch the rise and fall beyond explanation.

Your rule draws close when you dispatch prophets, messengers, and angels, who dare say, “Thus saith the Lord.”

You dispatch your sovereign word through human utterers… preachers, poets, artists, various freakish dissenters and dreamers.

We thank you for your word of governance; we do not want to be addressed by dreams, breaks, or possibilities.  We most certainly do not want to be bearers of such dreams, breaks, or possibilities, because we are mostly agents of steady equilibrium.

Nonetheless, we dare yearn for your word and occasionally utter it.  We thank you that we do not live in a world unaddressed.  We thank you that you are not a God unuttered.

So we pledge, as we are able, to listen and to speak, being available for your word that is full of grace and truth.