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Today our prayer comes from a little book recently published by the people of Commons Church, a vibrant ministry based in Calgary Alberta.  The book is titled “From a Season Like No Other” and is a collection of prayers prayed as people in that church gathered every day on the internet to pray together during the early days of the pandemic.  This prayer for us to pray together today is called “Beauty Radar” and through it we ask God to help us to recognize beauty in its less obvious forms.

May God’s blessing be upon you as we pray together today,
Dianne

Beauty Radar

Singing, breathing, healing Spirit,
why is it that my eyes are quick to notice 
all that is ugly, broken, and dysfunctional?
Maybe I see those things because
you have put a beauty radar in me
that alerts me to the misalignment
of what the world is and what you’ve meant it to be.
Or, maybe I only see what I’ve trained myself to look at?
Holy God,
open my eyes to see you breathing in places
where I struggle to breathe.
Open my ears to hear you singing in places 
where I only hear clamour or defeaning silence.
Open my heart to receive the healing
that comes when I search for your beauty.
Amen.

Yelena Pakhomova

With grateful thanks to Commons Church and Bobby Salkeld for granting us permission to incorporate these prayers into our daily devotionals.
From A Season Like No Other: Commons Prayers, Bobbi Salkeld, Jeanne New, Kevin Borst, Larissa Amour, Ryan Petkau, Scott Wall, Yelena Pakhomova, Printing in Calgary, Alberta 2021. p.40.

Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash