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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: SWEET HOUR OF PRAYER (don’t write about the song) (04/30/15)

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• TITLE: It is Then... | Previous Challenge Entry
  By Linda Goergen
  05/05/15
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When flood gates of unkindness are opened
and allowed to smash my joy,
like a tsunami crashing a ridge,
and I feel those waters of cruelty
can never be
just water under the bridge—

It is then I need to swim to the message
of God’s forgiveness,
in a sweet hour of prayer.

When I feel bare—stripped
of understanding
the hurt—I bewail and bemoan,
the tearing of my heart,
the obscuring of my vision,
my feeling deserted and alone—

It is then I need to clothe myself
in God’s love,
in a sweet hour of prayer.

When everything around me seems broken,
failing and falling apart,
and the hope I desperately seek
seems retreating and bleak,
and I feel like a bucket—with a hole
allowing my faith to leak—

It is then I need to fall into the trust
of God’s presence,
in a sweet hour of prayer.

When I feel scared and weak
without strength to fight,
and pain and malady slice me like a knife,
to capture, imprison
and disable me,
and steal meaning from my life—

It is then I need to be cradled
in God’s healing,
in a sweet hour of prayer.

When sorrow swallows me
devouring my joy and peace of mind,
and herds of rain clouds stampede across,
trample and toss, my sunshine,
hiding day behind
the darkness of my loss—

It is then I seek the strength
of God’s comfort,
in a sweet hour of prayer.

When I am worn and weary
and need refreshing and refueling,
and need a faithful, perfect guide,
when I need expressive words
and great wisdom
this world cannot provide—

It is then I seek to be filled
with God’s Holy Spirit,
in a sweet hour of prayer.

When I feel outnumbered and despised
for detouring from the wide path
of this sin-sick world—and I am devalued
by the growing many
who race, chase, and fight for
valueless values—

It is then I need to bask
in the truth of God’s holiness,
in a sweet hour of prayer.

When I am filled with joy and thankfulness
for blessings granted me,
and I contemplate a God without sin or vice
having such mercy—to pay the price
to redeem sinful humanity,
when I consider the cost of Jesus’ sacrifice—

It is then I need to weep at my unworthiness
of God’s incomparable compassion,
in a sweet hour of prayer.

Yes, it is then—and it is there,
in that sweet hour of prayer,
that every day, in every way,
in every need, or praise or care,
without fail, in that sweet, precious hour,
God meets me there.

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