A Prayer for an Anxious Week

As we begin another week, many of us may be tired, some of us may be joyful, and others angry. As our chests tighten from anxieties over health, elections, and daily hurdles, receive a prayer (*attributed to Oscar Romero, a Salvadoran priest and martyr whose Christian faith has inspired my missional commitments in Detroit and my journey to pastoral ordination): 

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders;
ministers, not messiahs.

*This prayer was composed by a bishop in metro Detroit in 1979 and later prayed in honor of Saint Romero.