In December, Mossy Creek Press released my new book, Poems, Prayers and Unfinished Promises. I have been so gratified by the readers’ enthusiastic responses. From time to time, I want to share a few excerpts with readers. Since we are in the Lenten Season, I share this prayer, found on page 48:
A Prayer for the Beginning of Lent
Based on Psalm 42:8-11
As a Baptist kid in the South, I had never heard of Lent, but I understood “call and response” instinctively. Someone sings and you sing back to them. In southern gospel, it was often something the basses and altos did, little descants under the melody, like a man and woman when they really speak and hear each other’s hearts. That’s the Lenten journey to me—get quiet, listen and when you finally pick up the song, sing back. You really have to train your ear to hear it.
“By day the LORD commands his steadfast love and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?” As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?” Why are you cast down, O my soul and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” Psalm 42:8-11 NRSV
Shadows fall deep within,
sometimes never seen but by closest friends,
and other times, only by me.
Sometimes I know only instinctively,
by Thee alone.
I do not even know they are there,
I do not know where they come from or why.
Yet other times I know why and cannot bear to see or feel them.
Lift the shadows, send Thy quiet into my heart.
Let me touch Thy holy rest, the untroubled waters of a calm spirit
Today and always,
by the yielding of my broken, sinful, troubled self in trusting love. Amen
Poems, Prayers and Unfinished Promises is available for purchase at Amazon.com or directly from me.. Visit my facebook page Gary Allison Furr Books and Music and click the shop now button to purchase autographed copies directly.
The Flatpickin' Pilgrim's Progress 