Vigils Reading

THE SUSTAINER OF LIFE

From the writing of Howard Thurman5 ◊◊◊

It is of enormous reassurance to us, our Father, that Thou art the sustainer and the holder of life, that despite all of our own limitations and finitudes, despite all our weaknesses and failures, despite all of the soarings of our minds and imaginations and our spirits, always we come back to the deeply-lying assurance that Thou art the sustainer of life, the holder of all creation, and the guarantor of all our values. This is of such overwhelming reassurance to us that we celebrate in simple words of praise this almighty grace.

We offer on our part not merely the good deeds of which we are aware at times, not merely the concerns for our fellows which sometimes lead us to simple deeds or glorious acts of self-sacrifice, but we offer Thee the things that we might become – all of the possibilities of our lives, the potentials not yet realized. We offer to Thee our failures also; those times when something breaks down and we do not know what… all that we might have been at a particular time and were not; all of the sense of conscience that disturbs and whips and tortures because we have not been in quality and in kind what we knew at the time we could have been in quality and kind. And beyond all of these expressions of ourselves, our Father, we offer to Thee ourselves. This is what we want to do, and sometimes we are able to do it – just to say to Thee, Father, here am I. My life as it is at its depth I give to Thee. And I want Thee to hold it so that it is no longer my life to do with in accordance with my whims, my impulses, my desires, or even my needs, but to take my life and to hold it until it takes on Thy character, Thy mind, Thy purposes. If Thou wilt do this and if Thou wilt help me to do this, then I can be in myself what is truest and surest in me. And this, O God, is all, all, all