Reconciliation

Lord God Almighty,

Thou art beforehand with men

  for thou has reconciled thyself to the world through the cross,

  and dost beseech men to accept reconciliation.

It is my responsibility to grasp thy overtures of grace,

  for if thou, the offended part, act first

   with the word of appeasement,

  I need not call in question thy willingness to save,

  but must deplore my own foolish maliciousness;

If I do not come to thee as one who seeks thy favour,

  I live in contempt, anger, malice, self-sufficiency,

  and thou dost call it enmity.

Thou hast taught me the necessity of a Mediator, a Messiah,

  to be embraced in love with all my heart,

  as king to rule me,

  as prophet to guide me,

  as priest to take away my sin and death,

  and this by faith in thy beloved Son

    who teaches me

  not to guide myself,

  not to obey myself,

  not to try to rule and conquer sin,

  but to cleave to the one who will do all for me.

Thou has made known to me

  that to save me is Christ’s work,

  but to cleave to him by faith is my work,

  and with this faith is the necessity of my daily repentance

  as a mourning for the sin which Christ by grace has removed.

Continue, O God, to teach me

  that faith apprehends Christ’s righteousness

  not only for the satisfaction of justice,

  but as unspotted evidence of thy love to me.

Help me to make use of his work of salvation as the ground of peace,

  and of they favour to, and acceptance of me the sinner,

  so that I may live always near the cross.

The emphasis is mine.

9-hour-long conversations with God do not necessarily result in visions (unless one counts the somewhat double-vision induced by sleepiness ), but this prayer from my roommate’s Valley of Vision book struck me deeply this morning.  Why do we think that God doesn’t care for us?  He has taken care of the biggest problem we as humans face—death!