A LITURGY BEFORE

Taking the Stage

What have I to offer here
that might sustain the souls of others?
Alone I have little more to show
beneath this scrutiny of lights
than my own pride and insecurity,
my craving for praise, and my fear of rejection.

Rather, let me offer something
greater in this place, O Christ.
As I step onto this stage,
meet me amidst the wreckage
of my ego and my woundedness,
and through me give what I alone cannot.

I offer you all that I have:
my talents, my training,
the years spent honing
and crafting and creating,
my passions, my personality, my history,
the many sacrifices I and others
have made in order for me to be here.
I give you even my brokenness,
of which I am also a steward.

I offer now these incomplete
and insufficient provisions,
remembering how you, in your days among us,
twice blessed inadequate offerings,
fashioning them into miraculous feasts
that would sustain crowds in their hard journeys.

I pray that you would likewise
receive and bless and multiply
my own meager gifts, Jesus,
for the benefit of all who have gathered here.

Let these humble elements, in your hands,
become a true nourishment for those
who hunger for you.
And for those who have not yet wakened
to their deepest hungers,
let my brief service to them
be like the opening of a window
through which the breezes of a far country might blow,
stirring eternal longings to life.

Take this tiny heap of my talents
and my brokenness alike,
this jumble of what is best and worst in me,
and meld it to the greater work of your Spirit,
using each facet as you will, so that,
even as sunlight coursing through a cracked prism,
your grace might somehow be revealed
upon this stage in whatever gloried and
peculiar patterns you have fashioned me to display.

Amen.