A Prayer for Thursday, June 27, 2013

Choices, Part 19

O God,

Help us today to choose others over ourselves.

Your Son taught us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, which seems to mean, among other things, that we can love others appropriately only as we love ourselves appropriately. At the same time he taught us that one key to following him is to deny self.

How do we deny ourselves and at the same time love ourselves? Perhaps to love ourselves is to be so secure in who we are in you that we are willing and even eager to give ourselves away. After all, that is how you are and since you have filled us with your love we can grow in loving like you love.

You love the world—everybody in the world—so much that you gave your Son.

So help us to see every other person as you see them—as someone to whom we can give ourselves rather than as someone against whom we need to protect ourselves.

Make us so secure in you that we can be vulnerable to each other.

Help us to choose others over ourselves.

Amen.