Lent 11

Lord and God,

It is good to declare your praise. It is good to boast of your righteousness. It is good to love and serve you alone as Most High. Why do our lives tell a different story? It is you who brought us to the land of grain and wine, who gave your body and blood for us, that we betray.

Let us break down and weep and beg you to take the hours from us which we waste in rebellion and defiance of you. Yet lift our heads. For as you who declare the end from the beginning foreknew and foretold the rebellion of your people yet still called them into your grace, so Jesus Christ foreknew and foretold Peter’s denial and still went to the cross. Let us not be like Judas who saw the worldly gain that he would lose, but look upon Christ himself, the inexpressible gift. And let us now, after the death and departure of our Lord which the fruit of grain and wine show forth, be fed and strengthened to live lives to your praise.