A Concrete Prayer

The article below is taken from prayers offered as a part of the morning worship service at Cambourne Church, led by David Wadsworth:

In approaching prayer this morning, I was inspired by the words of the poem from which Concrete Rose takes its name:

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s law is wrong it learned to walk without having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.

Lord God, whose spirit hovered over the chaotic, primordial waters of creation, when we look around us today, we see oceans of concrete. We see a world of war, of hardship, of hunger, of poverty; a nation where the phrase ‘cost of living crisis’ has grown so commonplace that we forget how unconscionable it is; a community where neat front doors close over broken lives; a church which has caused and covered-over pain. Spirit of God, we ask that you would be hovering over the concrete in our world today.

Lord, in your mercy…hear our prayer.

Loving Father, who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the flowers of the field, in every place of suffering there are roses striving to flourish in an uncaring world. We pray that they might learn to walk without feet, and breathe fresh air. But we pray that their witness would not be that ‘no one else ever cared’. May they know your care, Lord, and may you place other people around them to be ambassadors of your care. To those growing in the concrete of war, may you send peacemakers and healers; To those growing in the concrete of hunger, may you send those with food and the tools to create abundance; To those growing in the concrete of homelessness or seeking refuge, may you send those who open up their borders and their homes; To those who are growing up broken and scarred, may you send those who will bind-up and restore.

Lord, in your mercy…hear our prayer.

Son of God, who stepped down into the world to bring a message of hope and healing, we do not pray all this in the abstract. Open up our front lines that we might show your care to others. Open up our eyes to see the concrete and the roses growing up, miraculously, from the cracks within it. Where we have resources, help us to be generous; where we have time, help us to be patient; where we have institutional or political power, help us to be compassionate; whoever we are, whatever we do, help us to be faithful and prayerful. We pray especially for Concrete Rose, that you would continue to work through their work to provide accommodation and support that enables young people to step into a better future, until every young person is living life to the full with the foundations and opportunities to flourish.

Lord, in your mercy…hear our prayer.

Jesus our Saviour, we recall
another poem, far more ancient than Tupac’s, which adopts a similar image:

He grew up…like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Saviour God, we thank you for your sacrifice of love. We pray that your saving work would continue and that you would help and empower us by your spirit to take our place within it. May we look forward to a world where the concrete is demolished, living water is poured out upon the dry ground, and everywhere there will be roses flourishing without pain.

Lord, in your great and loving mercy…hear our prayer.
Amen.

 

Words by David Wadsworth