This prayer was originally offered during a Calvin University chapel service in February 2024. The Bible text for that service was Joel 2:12–17. For this prayer, the etymology of the word “rend” provides some helpful context. It comes from the Old English word berindan, which means to strip or peel away a rind or bark.
Loving God,
Once again we find ourselves in that strange season
that wavers between winter and spring—and winter.
We’ve enjoyed clear, bright days,
but even then we bundled up against the chill,
and today even the earth is putting back on her heavy winter coat.
Our hearts, too, are conscious of your grace and light,
but still encumbered and encased in heavy protective layers.
Stress is one of those layers. Busyness. Ambition.
And fear.
Your angels repeatedly tell your children in the Bible, “Be not afraid; be not afraid.”
But we are afraid.
We’re afraid of failure, of loss. We’re afraid of losing face.
We’re afraid of what our country might become—or what it has become.
We’re afraid of the violence that is not only happening in Ukraine and Gaza
but all too often seems only moments away from us.
Where are your angels, God?
In this season of Lent, you call us to repent of our sins,
but we’re pretty far from being able to do that.
Before we can repent of our sins, we would need to hate them.
And before we can hate them, we need to see them.
And we don’t. Selfishness feels pretty good.
Rend our hearts, O God.
Peel off the crusty calluses in which we have encased them:
the self-defenses, the denial,
the busyness and stress and work that numb us to your world.
Fearful hearts so often cocoon themselves in anger,
lashing out so as not to be hurt.
We call it self-defense,
or righteous indignation.
But it shields our hurts from loving you and our neighbors.
God of peace, rend our hearts.
Our many privileges insulate us from the struggles of those who do not have them.
How can a warm person understand a person who is cold—
a person with no roof under which to escape the falling snow?
How can a rich person know what it is to be poor?
How can the powerful understand the weak?
Our privileges can become like tough rinds.
God of justice, rend our hearts.
Love is so hard, God—
real love, the kind that acts lovingly toward the unlovable.
We’d so often rather stick to the easy kind of love:
loving people who clearly love us back.
Even the suffering of others is unpleasant to us, and if we can,
we turn away from it.
God of love, break our hearts.
Amen.