Lord of life's despairing moments

1 Lord of life's despairing moments
and of bleak Gethsemane,
times when prayer is the expression
of the spirit's agony;
times when in the human struggle
sweat breaks out like drops of blood
and our words dissolve in silence
in our thirsting after God.

2 Lord, made perfect through your sufferings,
breathing sighs and shedding tears:
you have shared our hesitations,
all our frailty, all our fears.
Gather up our thinnest praises
in your patient hands of love
and present them to the Father,
throned in majesty above.

3 Lord, your Spirit prays within us,
for we pray not as we ought;
takes our formless, faithless longing;
lifts our spirit, shapes our thought.
Lord, direct our stumbling journey
as we scale the mount of prayer
to that overwhelming summit,
finding joy and stillness there.

David Mowbray (born 1938)

© David Mowbray / Jubilate Hymns

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