Forgive us for Taking Offense

O Great God,

Thank you for your Word.
Thank you for enabling us to understand it, and for entrusting us to teach it.
Thank you that through it you reveal yourself as just,
yet without compromise to your ever-present mercies.
We don't understand how to meld these together; and so forgive us for taking offense.

Thank you for being a God who reached down
     to the garden after the man and woman disobeyed,
     to the death of Abel at the hands of Cain,
     to the construction of the tower of Babel,
     to the wicked people in Sodom and Gomorrah.

You always investigated although you knew all things.
You always met to communicate with those involved.
Even through destruction, a remnant always remained.
You always protected your seed.
In your wrath, you always remembered mercy.

Thank you for being the same God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
as you were to Paul, Peter, and John, and that you are to us now.
Forgive us for magnifying your acts of justice and for shaking our heads in unbelief.
Help us instead to seek you as you have sought us
and to cry with Abram "Oh sovereign Lord why?"
Teach us with this faith to admit our finiteness before you.

May we never get over the reality that you are a God who comes down,
who meets His creation where it is.
We praise you for being a relational God, who invites us to know and to be known.

Thy vows are ever upon us, and we praise you, O Great God.

We Have but One Master

Forgive us, Father, for we are a people of fear. 
it drives us,
    shapes us,
    prevents us,
    and influences us.

In fear we act as if enslaved to each other - Yet we have but one Master.

Have mercy on the fearful. 
Teach us to take courage.

At the name of Jesus may this be so.