Father, I really don’t like the person I am sometimes. I can pulsate with a longing to hear from You, sense the warmth of Your presence, be stirred by Your whispers and the intents of Your direction, give and give from a heart that truly loves You and is satiated with gratitude, and then wham!! Suddenly the only need I see is mine. My disappointment wrecks havoc with my spirit with an intensity that far outweighs the happening. The ugliness of self casts its menacing shadow and stifles any lingering thoughts of others. My reasoning wrestles against the oppression, and yet reasoning is overtaken by the tyranny of my selfish emotions. I sit in the resultant muck, sluggishly attempting to wrest myself from it. What is wrong? Why such a seemingly diabolical propensity to be thwarted by the insignificant? I recognize the duality of my nature – the purity of the new being rubbed abrasively by the harshness of the old. But it was only moments ago that contentment and joy filled my spirit, and my look was God-ward, and my heart felt the needs of others. What contrast! Is my joy and my satisfaction that conditional? Is the stability of my emotions based on a tenuous balance that is only sometimes achieved? Am I incapable of maintaining a perspective that thinks first of others, and then of myself? Isn’t that what You ask of us? Don’t be selfish. Be humble. Think of others as better than yourself. Have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. God, I can really make a mess of things!

 

O Father, free me from the oppression of my own selfishness! Love flows from You to those You love in floods of immeasurable outpouring. I am a recipient of that love! Water that pours profusely from its source, and then stagnates, breeds pollution in its darkened stench. O God, the sweetness of Your love that flows through me to others stays cognizant of their need, gives understanding, readily responds to their needs or sometimes stands aside to allow You to work in other ways. Father, make me a conduit of Your love! Not sometimes, but always! Teach me acceptance and rationality. Teach me sensitivity, and teach me how to wait on the whispers of Your Spirit always, that I would not respond or react out of a distortion of my own need. Teach me patience, and let my heart linger long as it gazes on the perfections of Your own love, a love profoundly exemplified in Your Son. I weep with the gravity of inconsistency. I know I am only human, but I am a human who has been immersed not only in Your love, but in Your grace. Let me be a reflection of both. And when I fail again, as I know I will, O Father, Precious Father, let me not sit in the muck, but enable me to fall prostrate at Your feet, and receive Your grace to be all You ask of me.