It’s not customary to see the necessity to pray for those (including ourselves) when we have “too much.” We pray when we are lacking, when we need something, not when we have everything; right?
Yet Jesus tells the faith family of Laodicea that in having everything, they missed what they needed most. So this week, as ones who as often as we are in need tend to as often have all we need, let us pray these words adapted from Earnest Campbell with and for one another. Striving to, as the apostle Paul did, to learn in Jesus “the secret to facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need” (Phil. 4:12).
Father, we pray today for ourselves and those among our faith family and in our communities and neighborhoods, who are burdened not by too little but by too much:
those (like myself at times) who have too much power that they have grown indifferent to the rights and claims of others, and are fast becoming what they do not wish to be;
those (like myself at times) who have so much health that they cannot understand the sick or reckon adequately with their own mortality;
those (lime myself at times) who have so much wealth that they prize possessions more relationship, and worry into the night about losing what they have;
those (like myself at times) who have so much virtue that they cannot see their sins or appreciate your grace;
those (like myself at times) who have so much leisure that they move like driftwood on the surface of existence, lacking any cause larger than themselves.
O Father, you are are able to save us from abundance or privation, to meet the strong in their strength, and in love show them (and myself at times) their need. Possess them (and myself) in the fullness of their powers, that what they (and I) have and what they (we) are may be conscripted for your service and there with Jesus, find wholeness and peace.
Because Jesus lives and reigns as Savior, Friend, and Lord. Amen.