Sloughs of Grace

(Ecclesiastes 11:1-2) Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.

Most merciful God, as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are Your ways higher than ours. You are perfect, but You are no perfectionist; You are just and merciful and neither at the expense of the other; You demand everything of us, and everything You demand You are pleased to give us freely as a gift. Forgive us dear Lord…

For unlike You we are the very picture of miserliness, stinginess and greed. The love, blessing and joy that You share within the holy Trinity is continually spilling out onto others. You are the ultimate “cheerful giver” and are always and only too glad to give, even at great cost to Yourself. But unlike You, we have not “cast our bread upon the waters.” Fearing want and deprivation, we have hoarded divine blessings to ourselves. And doubting the inexhaustible abundance of Your supply we have determined to stockpile and accumulate, rather than pass-on and allocate the mercies, gifts and provisions that You daily pour into our lives. Lord have mercy upon us…

And hear us now as we confess our particular sins to You...

Confessing Sloth and Indolence

(Ecclesiastes 10:18) Through sloth the roof sinks in, and through indolence the house leaks.

Jehovah God our Creator and Redeemer, all praise, honor and glory be to You. You are ever-creating, ever-refining, ever-transforming and ever-overseeing the works of Your hands, and sovereignly guiding the course of history to a grand and glorious climax of love and redemption. Forgive us dear Lord…

For unlike You, we have been slothful and indolent. In spite of the fact that You have given us every reason to be active and energetic in Your glad service, we have simply chosen to be inactive, lifeless and uncaring. We have chosen the self-serving leisure of computers and television over the selfless hard-labor of service; and the inglorious ease of isolation to the glorious messiness of community. Lord have mercy upon us…

For we find ourselves the victims of our own idleness, inactivity and apathy. The roof of Your house (the Church) sags, sinks-in and leaks. Through laziness and inattention, sloth and distracting recreations, we have failed to build, repair, renovate, protect and preserve Your house (the Church.) Lord have mercy upon us…

For neither have we sought out new “living stones” for You to fit together with us in the building of Your house (the Church.) We have preferred the tidiness of our holy huddles to the disarray of evangelism and new-believer discipleship. We have spent countless hours refining our understanding of truth, but failed to take it to those in our community who are entrapped by falsehood. We have spent countless hours honing our grasp of goodness, but failed to share it with those who live in the clutches of evil. We have spent countless hours perfecting beauty and yet failed horribly to redemptively address the ugliness of sin in our valley: poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, gross sexual sin and addiction, fatherlessness, homelessness and hopelessness. For our sloth and indolence, Lord have mercy upon us…

And hear us now as we confess our particular sins to you….