Prayer
By Courtney Hoekstra
God who creates and recreates us,
We have felt the shifting and shaping
Of your hands on our very being in these days—
Sometimes in the brush of our cheeks against those of our new sisters and friends;
Or in the weight of a new scarf draped around our necks;
Or in the words spoken between sips of tea.
But we’ve also felt ourselves pressed and shaken—
By outstretched hands that we’ve ignored,
Or in the mysteriously shining eyes of those with nothing,
And in the exhaustion that has overtaken us simply by living and breathing
as millions of your children live and breathe every day.
You alone are Wisdom
And we thank you for living with us in our questions-
For your patience when we are naïve,
For your challenging always the answers we think we have.
For teaching us, for waking us up to your world, for meeting us here in your people in India,
We thank you.
For the joy, the laughter, the new friends made,
We thank you.
For the tears, the sleepless nights, the challenge of living mere moments outside our privilege,
We thank you.
Press us still, and swell within us the courage to live into what we now know,
And the wisdom to keep asking unanswerable questions.
In the name of the One who sends us,
May it be so.
Courtney traveled to India in October 2011 with Presbyterian Women’s Global Exchange.
Invite the participant from your synod to your next event to share more insights from this life-changing trip.
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