Morning prayer · 5 May

Love that sets me free

A young animal on a leash-free collar is carried in its mother's mouth across a wide open field, legs dangling loose, utterly unresisting and unworried about the direction taken.

Lord, thank you that your love holds on to me. In the great maze of life you don’t wait for my permission to lead me, but lead me by a way I don’t know, a way above my small understanding. My bitterness doesn’t push you away, and my hot temper doesn’t turn you aside. Nothing in the universe is as glorious as your love. It makes me come in. Service that sets me free, love that shuts me in only to set my feet in a wider room, hold me closer and closer. Protect me from rash desires, gone as fast as they come. Don’t ask me where I’d like to go. Tell me where to go. Lead me in your way, and hold me in your light. Amen.

I will lead the blind by a way they did not know; I will guide them on unfamiliar paths. I will turn darkness into light before them and rough places into level ground. These things I will do for them, and I will not forsake them.

Isaiah 42:16 (BSB)

Adapted from George Matheson, via Prayers Ancient and Modern (1897), in plain words. The verse is from the Berean Standard Bible (public domain). Drawing: Mutter.