You Can Come As You Are

I enjoy going to friend’s homes when I don’t have to change shirts before I go over.

When it comes to prayer, however, I often feel like I need to put on a clean shirt before going before the Lord. Much of that feeling is proper—our Holy God, Lord of heaven and earth, deserves my respect and attention. But the scriptures also encourage our raw emotion or frustration or anger when we pray. We can blurt out our thoughts to the Lord.

David led this way in his psalms. His prayers are earthy, real and certainly not high falutin’ or pompous.

He starts safe enough: Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.

But a skip ahead David records the Lord’s response: your feet may wade in the blood of your foes, while the tongues of your dogs have their share.

That’s a lot of blood. I don’t remember ever praying to wade in the blood of my enemies, but it’s right there in the psalms. The same man who wrote the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, hoped to watch his dogs lapping up the blood of his adversaries.

Throws my idea of prayer on its head. But it opens my eyes to the reality that I can be real with the Lord. I can pray frustrations and pain and anger along with gratitude and thankfulness and praise.

I can come as I am when I go to the Lord.

Psalm 68 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Jon Tyson