Apocalyptic Prayer

God,

as things seem to collapse

and people leave

and give up.

I can’t tell

Is this the end of the apocalypse?

Or the beginning?

What are we uncovering?

Will things change?

Or will we trundle along,

insisting that everything is

has been

and will be normal.

Is this how it was on Palm Sunday Jesus?

When people were welcoming you

with open arms.

Was everyone saying,

I can’t wait til Israel

gets back to normal.

Did you bother to tell them

That’s not what I’m here for?

Or did you answer,

like to Pilate–

You say that is what I’m here for

More or less agreeable.

God, I find that I am agreeable

these days,

as I don’t know

what is happening next–

I agree that this might happen

or that

and then I always end the day

in prayer

God’s will be done

God’s kin(g)dom come.

Because heaven knows,

I’m just another human

living in apocalyptic times.

God, I don’t have a bigger prayer

than this–

your will be done

your kin(g)dom come.

Amen.

Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

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