Day after day, week after week we pray,
“O Lord, I am not worthy to receive,
but only say the word—but only say—
and shall my soul be healed.” So we believe,
yet somehow, month by month, comes no reprieve
as year by year our sicknesses consume
the dust you brought forth naked from the womb.
We cannot help but know, though long we’ve pled
for ignorance or for some other fate,
the slave will die, centurion hang his head.
We pray through every moment we await
that which must come, though we know not its date—
two women there, one taken and one left,
one gone into the dark and one bereft.
Or if not death, an unseen thorny crown,
a broken frame, the sins we cannot best.
What does not kill us simply wears us down
and none of us is spared the final test.
What is this prayer, this hope we have confessed?
What but the drowning hand thrust from the wave
before it sinks, if no one comes to save?
Take, then, O God, the flutter of our hand
as frantic as the flickering of flame
upon the altar, take the breath that fanned
these torches by the whisper of your name,
as gifts we bring which only you can claim.
Take them as acts of faith despite our doubt:
Yours is the altar where we flicker out.
Still do you bring us back to life each day;
still is your mercy every morning new,
so we may bow our heads again to pray,
we who will fade as quickly as the dew,
“I am not worthy, Lord, receiving you,
but say the word and I shall be made whole,”
and wait for you to speak into our soul.
detail study for the “Heller Altarpiece” By Albrecht Dürer – Google Arts & Culture, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21792217
Kate Bluett 