Prayer: Mark 10: 24-25

Here’s a prayer of confession and dedication from Jan Berry’s collection of prayers, Bread of Tomorrow. It came to mind when working through the gospel reading for Proper 23B:

“But Jesus said to them again,
‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’” Mark 10:24-25

Prayer of Confession and Dedication:
Spoiled Children

God, You heap your love upon us
like a parent providing for a family’s needs,
embracing a child with tenderness.

Forgive us
when, like spoiled children,
we treat Your generosity as our right,
or hug it possessively to ourselves.

Give us enough trust to live secure in Your love
and to share it freely with others
in open-handed confidence
that Your grace will never run out.  Amen.

~ Copyright © Jan Berry, England, in Bread of Tomorrow: Prayer for the Church Year, ed. Janet Morley (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1992), p. 147. Used by permission.