It’s easy to come to the conclusion that, if I have tried and failed to force myself to change, I simply cannot change. However, Peter wrote that God “has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:1-4). It is not by my own strength, but through God’s, that I participate in the adventure of this life. I’m not forced to change – I’m free to. And it’s good to pray in ways that remind me of this.
I found the prayer in Walter Brueggemann’s “Epiphany” to be this kind of prayer, and it ends with this stanza:
That we may have energy, courage, and freedom to enact
your rule through the demands of this day.
We submit our day to you and to your rule, with deep joy and high hope.
Notable also is Gerard Manley Hopkins’s closing stanza of “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” for it emphasizes the startling reality that Christ’s glory makes our flawed flesh glorious. What mysterious freedom we have because of God’s decision to create us in his image, and Jesus’ decision to pay the debt of our sins and dwell with us in spirit.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
Sometimes we just need to realize that, because of Christ’s presence, we have within us the radical freedom to make unexpected choices, changes of course – like the Magi who chose to return home by a different way after visiting the child Jesus, so that the ill-willed King Herod could not find him (Matthew 2:1–12).