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confession: we keep you at arm’s length

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You, Lord, are closer to us than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. And yet we so often try to keep you at arm’s length, even as we beg for you to be with us. We close the door to protect our privacy, believing security can be gained by keeping others out. We stand outside, believing you don’t really invite us in…and if you do, certainly not along with them.

When we take a step back, insisting on both physical and emotional distance in the name of what is proper, forgive us. When we believe that surface relationship is plenty deep enough, and protest your call to be fully real with one another and with you, forgive us. When we rely on custom as a way to keep ourselves apart, forgive us.

Close the gap between us, Lord, and show us what true love does.

~silence~

One:    Open wide the door of life, O God,

All:     and give us courage to walk through.

Submitted by Rev. Teri Peterson, the Presbyterian Church of Palatine, IL

confession: we’d rather keep the door closed

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One:    You, Lord, are Alpha and Omega—beginning and end.
But in between sometimes it feels like we are on our own,
and then the illusion of control is so seductive.

All:     Forgive us when we try to control you, insisting that your will must match ours.
For we confess that we do not like the unknown,
so we fill that void with shoulds and musts we expect both you and others to obey.
We’d rather keep the door closed with certainty than risk opening to changed life.
We’d rather be bound up in our own beliefs than risk being set free by love, for love.

~silence~

One:    Open wide the door of life, O God,
All:     and give us courage to walk through.

 

Submitted by Rev. Teri Peterson, the Presbyterian Church of Palatine, IL