Today’s Reflection:  Prayer

Lord God,
Too often when I don’t notice,
I make myself too large – a king of my kingdom –
and nothing else seems to matter until I handle
just one more matter to settle things,
and this goes on and on and on and on.

But then, in rare moments, I see you face-to-face
and I shrink so small before your glory –
how could I ever have pretended or forgotten my way
into becoming so big? 

But you, Lord, want neither.
You raise me up from my smallness;
you call me, and
You want my bigness – but my true bigness,
my dignity, my gifts, my very best –
and you want me to put it
at your service
at the service of those,
who, by decree of the kings,
are condemned to feeling small,
forgotten, excluded, marginal.

Show me Lord, my best,
and show me where to give it,
like at a manger of migrants from Nazareth or further south,
bearing hope and little else,
until they, too, discover their bigness
before and because of you. Amen. —Fr. Garrett Gundlach, SJ

Morning Offering  is a daily post by Joe Barkovich, who lives in his hometown of Welland, Ontario. Daily photo by Joe Barkovich.

Morning Offering is posted by 8 a.m.