I walk in Your way, yet the chains make me stumble and fall.
You always catch me, but falling still hurts.
You never promised an easy path and though I am but one, I follow.
Others walk the same path as I, but I cannot see them through my own darkness.
My own pride dims the light, my worries cloud in the shroud of darkness that surrounds me.
I hear Your voice calling me, yet I hesitate,
too distracted by the false prophets of light, who call me by my desires and my failures
who show the path to my own destruction.
They bog me in the sea of my own inequities.
But no matter how much I stray, by my side You stay.
You try to carry me, yet I squirm and resist Your embrace. I close my ears to Your loving words.
I complain when I should listen. I hate when I should love.
I focus on the pebbles in my way, calling them boulders.
I complain about the hills as I stand on top of the mountains You've helped me climb.
I grow weary of a battle already won.
It is easier to sink into the depths of a pit than to fly with the wings of an eagle.
I grow passive to the grappling of smoky tendrils that entomb me in smoldering ash.
Forgive me, O Lord, of my ignorance of Your glory.
Breathe on me yet again and let me live with the burning desire of existing solely for you.
Through my own darkness may Your light shine.
May Your light be so bright that it blinds me to anything else.
May Your light never waver, never dim within me,
but let it grow ever increasingly, consuming all of me.
Use me to light the darkness.
This I pray to be. Amen.