My Psalm

How wonderful you are, Lord!

How amazing your world,

How awesome you love me.

Who am I to be loved by the Lord?

Do I ever really care about you?

What do I have to offer?

How much do we really have in common?

Surely there can be no other reason for loving me except that you love me.

Your world is startling and intricate.

I’ve made it a joke before: “God must love details, he made so many of them.”

Yet true indeed: How many things you have made!

And I am one — with so many things inside me.

Organs, skin, blood, down to myriads and myriads of atoms,

to one another.

I am a wonder. Yet so is my neighbor.

Even the annoying, hateful ones.

Help me remember how you hung there in agony

Asking that they be forgiven. That I be forgiven.

And I don’t understand why.

You who say “Let there be” and the thing is,

Why wasn’t forgiveness that simple?

A bloodless, painless “Undo” of our self-centering, self-defining egos.

Yet that isn’t what you chose.

You descended into our world, held firm through pain and agony.

Forgave, said it was finished, gave up your Spirit

Then took it back again.

Hallelujah, worthy is the Lamb that was slain,

To receive glory and honor and wisdom and power.

this was inspired by these two articles:
The Gaping Hole in the Modern Missions Movement: Part 1 Part 2