Fast Day prayer
This Fast Day we pray that we may plant seeds of solidarity, rooted in compassion and justice.
Fourteen-year-old Dristy loves to plant trees in her garden in Bangladesh but sometime wishes she could speed the growth up.
“You shall no longer be called Abram, your name shall be Abraham, for I will make you father of a multitude of nations.”
In today’s first reading, God appears to Abram to give him a new name and an astonishing promise – that he will become the father “of a multitude of nations”.
Abraham has already left the security and wealth of his home. At the age of seventy-five, he stepped out in faith to make the long journey into the unknown. Now ninety-nine, and still childless, he patiently continues to trust in God’s promises.
Patience can be difficult.
Fourteen-year-old Dristy loves to plant trees in her garden in Bangladesh. She enjoys imagining all the fruits and flowers that will grow, but sometime wishes she could speed things up, as she says:
“I only wish it didn’t take so long! It would be great if you could just plant the saplings, and then they grow the very next day. But it’s very satisfying to watch them grow.”
This time of Lent invites us to slow down and to practise the patient trust that Abraham models. To find satisfaction, like Dristy, in seeing growth, even if it is small, and takes time. To make space to encounter God and to learn to walk more closely in his way of generous love.
Today let’s try to be more patient with ourselves and others.
Lent prayer
Patient God,
help us to be attentive,
truly present to each moment,
to listen deeply to your call
and respond with loving trust.
Amen.
Act
Take some time to pause and pray with us today, that we may be rooted in God’s compassion and justice and grow in in his ways, bearing witness to the love revealed to us in Jesus.