"For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." (1 Cor. 1:25)
A Prayer for Busy People
Posted On: June 15th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
O Lord, Your Son, the Son of Man for us men for our salvation, had not where to lay His head when foxes found their dens and the birds of heaven settled rustling to their nests.
Your servant Paul spent and was spent, ground fine between the turning wheels of the business of his Lord.
We thank you, Lord, for busy people everywhere: those fine, long ranks of men of conscience who march straight and steady on the business of Your world and live on the small, gray satisfaction of their work well done.
How good they are, these devotees of duty! What a piece of work is the working of Your will in their wills! Work gets done. Contracts are fulfilled. Buses and trains and planes arrive on time. Letters get delivered. My morning papers and my milk are at my door. Roads are repaired, streets are swept. Lighthouses wink steadily through the unwatched hours.
How good they are! How much more beautiful than the colorful idlers, the coffee-sipping critics of the humdrum, the dreamy rebels, who would be up to their necks in their own rubbish but for the unfailing ministrations of those colorless consciences they despise!
Forgive me, Lord, for taking them for granted, for putting on them leisurely demands for more and more, for blanking out their persons with some utilitarian, impersonal, covering epithet like "service personnel."
Remember them in mercy, O Lord. Give them joy in the jobs they do so well. Give them eyes to see the greatness of the ordered world which they keep orderly - for You. Let them not grow small in listless littleness of heart; nor smug in their own decency; nor hard on those who seem less busy than themselves; nor forgetful, in their harassments, of You, too busy for the blessing of Your Word, too preoccupied to walk through the gate of prayer which You hold open to us all.
(from Pray for Joy by Martin H. Franzmann (Concordia Publishing House, 1970)