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A Prayer for the Irritable Lord, I ask you to comfort those who are unloved because they lack the will-power to maintain their composure in the presence of life's daily tribulations and thus express themselves only through irritation. Lord, have mercy on them for it is You who made them in Your image, with all its apparent susceptibility to flaws, not the least of which is the inability to find peace in the presence of a steady litany of petty complaints: the repetitive irresponsibility of our children, the dolorous aching of joints that rises with us from our beds, the innocent questions put to us for which we have no answer, and, of course, the endless haunting of existential dread. Lord, ignore the pleas of the irritable, who pray for children to no longer act as children, for the body to remain bedridden, for the voices of the innocent to be permanently silenced, and, of course, for the annihilation of the human condition. Lord, it is difficult to love the irritable; none know it better than those caught in its grasp. They need a strength beyond miracle; do You have any such remedy left in Your dwindling storehouse of mysteries? I see neither the answer nor the end to this prayer so I default to a secondary, peripheral request. Lord, let the resentment of those who love me sufficiently to endure the bitter treatment, fair or unfair, at my hands, never cease to grow. Let them realize their good works are misplaced. Let them find better uses for their mercy and compassion. Let me be abandoned for I know the limit of my appeal and that I have well passed it. |
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A Prayer for the Irritable David Keffer Knoxville, TN October 3, 2014 |