Recent

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you, “Violence!” and you will not save?

We pound the doors of Heaven, shouting “Listen! Pay attention! Are you asleep!”

Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.

Pull the alarm! Sound the alert! Summon the Almighty!

So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous, and justice is bartered to the highest bidder.

Are we forgotten? Cast aside? Scorned by those of boastful pride?

Then the Lord answered: Stop your whining! Pull yourself together. Your self-pity is embarrassing. Get yourself a billboard. Set a neon sign in the sky. So that even the most harried soul can see it clearly. And this is what it should say:

Don’t let your fears get behind the wheel. Live out of the memory of God’s provision; resist the madness of market forces.

Live by the sturdy Promise, not the ruptured profit. A New World is approaching. If is seems slow, keep on keeping-on.

Shiver no more, for God is not done!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4.

Sisters and Brothers, both near and afar, from our tribe or another, of whatever skin hue—whether chalky or chocolate—from Mars or from Venus or places in between: Come, gather round, turn your ear for the better to hear.

The pool of deliverance will soon be astir. A transforming immersion awaits your approach.

Come, all you whose lives have been poisoned with shame and crippled with regret.

The pool of deliverance will soon be astir. A shame-rinse submersion awaits your consent.

Come, all of you whose memories are strangled in anger.

The pool of deliverance will soon be astir. Here the tangles of vengeance are soaked to submission.

Come, all of you whose lives are belittled by failure.

The pool of deliverance will soon be astir. Let your frets be dissolved by a stain-cleansing plunge.

O Breath of Heaven, come hover again o’er these waters of pardon: let new life begin.

Bid us rise and to walk in your wake and your Way, knowing grace is sufficient for each passing day.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by John 5:1-9a.

Hear this, O People of the Dream: It is good and right that you recall the memory of

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement which mobilized him. The journey to the Beloved Community is sometimes dark and desperate and dangerous, and we need constellating light to orient our hearts and direct our feet.

Singing: God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
               Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
               Thou who hast by Thy might led us into the light,
               keep us forever in the path, we pray.

We confess, O God, that the dream once unfurled with unmatched eloquence on our nation’s lawn has been tamed by pious sentiment and framed for commercial interests. The oratory that once sent shivers through White House and big house and church house alike has been reduced to polite platitude, “race relations” Sundays and gushy, mushy reverie.

Singing: Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee;
             Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Ignite in us again the Word that stirs insurrection against every imperial reign, against every forecloser’s claim, against every slaver’s chain, until the Faith which death could not contain, the Hope which doubt could not constrain and the Love which fear could not arraign lifts every voice to sing till earth and heaven ring!

Singing: Let our rejoicing rise, High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Using lines from “Life Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson, written in honor of the Martin Luther King Center in Havana, Cuba.

When Pentecostal power erupts, all heaven’s gonna’ break loose.

The boundaries will be compromised; barriers will be broken; and borders will be breached.

Economies of privilege will be fractured, and the politics of enmity will be impeached.

The revenge of the Beloved is the reversal of Babel’s bequest.

“I will pour out my Spirit,” says the LORD.

Poured out not for escape to another world beyond the sky but here, amid the dust.

Poured out not on disembodied spirits but “upon all flesh.”

We stand amazed, astonished, even perplexed, and we ask, “What does this mean.”

It is to the agony of abandonment that Heaven is aroused.

Queer the One Who fashions a future for the disfavored.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Acts 2, Isaiah 40:5 & Luke 3:6, adapted from the author’s longer poem, “Pentecostal Passion.”

Dear Jesus: Don’t do that. Don’t go saying “I come not to bring peace, but division.” You’re scaring us. Don’t you know there are children in the room!

Peace is not the product of the politics of fear, of Wall Street fraud or war profiteer.

Listen, Lord, we need you to get back to being a sweet Jesus. Sweet little Jesus boy, born in a manger.

Herod didn’t think of Jesus as sweet.

And a manger wasn’t some first-century Palestinian crib. It’s an animal feeding trough filled with dried sheep slobber.

Peace is not the silence of the sepulcher, drowning sad-soul songs of lament; peace is not repressing, abducting, disappearing all who dissent.

Peace isn’t passive. It’s not always nice or good-natured, cheerful or charming, winsome or quiet or sweet.

Prophecy that provokes no crisis, asserting no claim or offense, is a liturgy deaf to Redemption’s resolve, inflated with pious pretense.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Luke 12:49-53, Jeremiah 6:13-15, and former Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.*

And how are we to spend ourselves for the sake of the world that God loves? For the recognition? For the virtue?

For the hope of return in the future? Maybe for the pleasure?

No, we “give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.”**

Give without allowing the left hand to know what the right hand does.

Give without hope for heaven or fear of hell.***

If you experience forgiveness, you will be forgiving. If you encounter mercy, you will be merciful.

Exhausting yourself in giving grows more from pride than from love. The world’s salvation is not up to you. So back off!

In Jesus’ parable, we are neither the sower nor the seed. We are the ground. Direct all your longing to be fertile soil. The sower will come, and the seed will be planted, in good time.

It is no sin to leave some things for our children—and to God.****

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Mark 4:26-34 & Matthew 6:3-4. *Line from the Talmud. **Line from Kahlil Gibran. ***Line from Rabia al-Adawiyya, 8th century Sufi mystic. ****Line from Walter Rauschenbusch.

Listen up, you heralds of hope: Hear the cheer of angels for your big, bold, even brassy acts of courage. Don’t back down from the chance to be audacious, bodacious, maybe even contentious.

Yet it is the tenacious on whom the Beloved most depends.

Quotidian faithfulness—in life’s persistent, unremarkable moments, when no bands play, no cameras roll, no headlines appear—this is the persevering labor which Redemption most employs. Ordinary time rocks.

Vision for mission begins with the street signs in your own neighborhood.

The bonds you restore outweigh the bounty you confer.

An inch of fertile soil takes a millennium to amass. Plant a coastal redwood, and fruit trees whose yield you will not taste.

Small stuff matters. An ounce of care is worth a ton of theory.

Foster the habits of daily attention and timely words to encourage.

God’s in the details; the devil prefers abstraction.

Come mothers and shepherds, gardeners and menders. Come fathers and healers, instructors, defenders.

The rendezvous of Heaven with earth is announced with each pardon’s release.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org.

Friends, of all the things we believe or disbelieve, only this is sure:

We are a delight to the One who crowns the earth with sky,

Who shines on the soil by day and shelters the heart by night.

Because of this jubilant news, clothe yourselves with royal attire:

With compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.

Bearing with one another in the midst of disagreement,

Forgiving one another in the aftermath of conflict.

Having known forgiveness, by the One whose breath fills our lungs,

We are granted the power to forgive others.

And by forgiving others, we linger in the Shadow of Mercy.

So let us announce the goodness of God on Mount Mitchell

And may Town Mountain* echo our joyous songs of praise!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Colossians 3:12-17. *Town Mountain runs through Asheville.

Oh, for a Word to be heard from above
School us in mercy, tutor in grace

Oh, for a pardon for hardened contempt
School us in mercy, tutor in grace

Oh, for a vision, a decision and desire
School us in mercy, tutor in grace

Oh, for an ear just to hear our name spoken
School us in mercy, tutor in grace

Oh, for a sight, clear and bright, pure delight
School us in mercy, tutor in grace

Oh, for a heart to impart love unmeasured
School us in mercy, tutor in grace

Oh, for a tongue hitched to lungs full of praise
School us in mercy, tutor in grace

Behold, the day comes when the dumb shall rejoice!
Behold, every hearing, no fearing that Voice!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Mark 7:31-37.

People of Mercy, put your hands together for the One we adore, lift your cheers to the Tender of orphans and widows, to the Protector of migrant farmer and those crushed with medical debt.

[All clap and cheer!]

Release your grip on the gods of armed might, on strategies of shock and awe. Confound the tortured schemes of the White House, jolt the laggard vision of the church house, and raise the burdened hopes of the poor house.

[All clap and cheer!]

Offer your applause to the cause of the One yet unknown in the Pentagon and in the board rooms of privilege. Their profit margins and preemptive plans will be confounded, for the Prince of Peace approaches with a new agenda for investment.

[All clap and cheer!]

Rain will absorb every drought and mercy be restored to the marketplace. Lush meadows will break through the developer’s asphalt. Affordable homes will open for all whose hopes have been foreclosed. Those who buy and sell the futures of crops and petroleum, who barter menial wages for market share, will confront the One who crushes the delight for war and leads the prisoner to prosperity.

Our applause belongs to this One alone!

All praise to the Blessed One whose name is pronounced in the mending of creation and in remembrance of the forgotten.

Oh Lord of life, we come to you. Create in us a clean heart. Bless us in the work of blessing. Heal us in the work of healing. Light our path in the journey of love through the wilderness of enmity.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Psalm 68.