A Prayer For You Today

Dear Friends,

The English word amateur evolved from the Latin word amator, which means lover. Therefore, an amateur engages in a pursuit for the love of the thing pursued. May God give us the grace to be amateur Christians!

A prayer for you today.

God and Father, the way of the amateur: to love what you love as you love it.

To make, to mend, to move for the sake of love is something that we cannot always say about ourselves, as it was for Adam and Eve, so too for us.

In the fall, we failed not because we loved what you made and how you made it, but because we slithered it down to what we could make it mean to us.

Our identity was diluted; your gifts twisted into idols.

Instead of should we heard – shouldn’t.

Instead of you are we heard – you are not.

Instead of guard this, we heard – grab and eat and strive to be.

Therefore, we believed the lie, believe it still, and by this lie we are deceived.

We say to ourselves that the way of the amateur is second best. The way of love will always be less. We’d better hedge our bets and hustle and hide.

Oh, great God and Father. Oh, great lover, forgive us.

Forgive us for taking your creation not for what it is but for what we might make it mean to us.

Forgive us when we forget how to be human, how to love what you love, because you simply love it.

For the sake of Jesus Christ, the perfect amateur, restore to us a child’s likeness of wonder and curiosity of craft and skill, unwearied delight and daring joy.

Not hearing, “you're not, you can't eat”, rather in Christ I will, I can, I have because He is, and He is perfect.

In everything we attempt for the first time, help us to walk in the way of love.

Things we've done countless times help us to walk in the way of love, and the routines of our life help us to walk in the way of love.

Dear Father, help us to walk in the way of the amateur. For your love, to love as you love is always the gift of your grace. The call to be an amateur, we must embrace.

It is good. You are good. In You, Father, Son, and Spirit, we are good; we are deeply good. Amen.

A prayer of Sarah C. Chestnut, taken and slightly abridged from the book Every Moment Holy

Grace and peace to you and yours. May God grant us a grace-filled and peace-filled week.

Pastor Joe