Magnificent Prayer #311
Magnificent Prayer #311
I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.
Isaiah 43:20–21
Dear Lord, it seems that you are so madly in love with your creatures that you could not live without us. So you created us; and then, when we turned away from you, you redeemed us. Yet you are God, and so have no need of us.
Your greatness is made no greater by our creation; your power is made no stronger by our redemption. You have no duty to care for us, no debt to repay us. It is love, and love alone, which moves you.
CATHERINE OF SIENNA
Pray About It: God is love. In His love, He lives with us and in us. In His love, He listens to our prayers. He is committed to us as to nothing else in this entire universe.
The great violin-maker, Stradivari, marked every one of his carefully made instruments with the name of Jesus. For that reason, these treasured masterpieces of creation are still called Stradivarius del Gesu to this day.
In His creation of us, His human instruments, God has also marked each of us by the death of His Son for us. God so loves us—it is truly as if God could not live without us.
Think about this as you pray: A God who wants companionship with you.
Make God’s day. Talk to Him.
Beloved, what manner of love is this wherewith God hath loved us; so as to give his only Son, in glory equal with the Father, in Majesty co-eternal?
What manner of love is this wherewith the only-begotten Son of God hath loved us so as to empty himself, as far as possible, of his eternal Godhead; as to divest himself of that glory which he had with the Father before the world began; as to take upon him the form of a servant, being found in fashion as a man; and then, to humble himself still further, “being obedient unto death, even the death of the cross!”
JOHN WESLEY
From the book
