O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy, be gracious to
all who have gone astray from Your ways and bring them again with penitent
hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of
Your Word; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
This prayer echoes a line from a famous hymn that is found in
our hymnal. You may well know it: “O Christ, Our True and Only Light” (LSB
#314). The hymn was written by Johann Heermann, a prolific German Lutheran hymn
writer of the century following Martin Luther. The hymn calls upon that true
Light to shine on those estranged from God, who are lost in error’s maze and
who sit in darkness. What is not so well known is that Heermann did not come up
with the central idea of the hymn. He read it in a poem written by someone
else. He did not know the author of the poem. It was an Austrian Jesuit named
Peter Brillmacher who had lived decades before Heermann and had been on the
front line of the Roman Catholic response to the Lutheran movement in southern
Germany.
When Brillmacher wrote those words, he thought the Lutherans
were the folks who had been estranged from God and were lost in error’s maze!
Heerman heard these words and thought of other people. We find this hymn in the
“Missions” section of our hymnals. But this prayer, if it is to be prayed needs
to start with us. We all have been enlightened by that true Light because we
needed it. We have done our fair share of wandering in error’s maze and have
sat destitute and helpless in utter darkness. This is a prayer about us before
it can ever be a prayer about someone else. Pray this prayer for yourself and
then pray it for someone else too. [1]
The Trinity copyright (c) Ed Riojas, Higher Things
No comments:
Post a Comment