Confessions

A public confession of sins is part of our faith tradition's worship service. It's not that we don't have private confessions through prayer, but our lives intersect with the printed public confession, and there are those sins that we have corporately as a community. I've never had a problem with the section of worship devoted to confession of sins and I find it surprising that some people find objection to being grouped into a public time of confession. I'm always able to find myself and my actions in those words. Thanks be to God for the Assurance of Forgiveness. We have a new intern who started today and his role during the worship service was to lead us through the prayer of confession. But here's my confession... today I had to smile during this holy time. To hear our confessions of sin with the eloquence of a proper English accent made the word "tawdry" sound tempting! Accents have a way of influencing your mood. An apology from a Carolina southern drawl is much more convincing than from a gruff New Englander. A cowboy joke told through the voice of a West Texas twang is much more entertaining than from a Canadian inflection, eh?

My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, We offer our confessions before you. We confess that we don't follow your directions whole-heartedly, we evoke our own agendas, and we try to use our own vision of how to complete the tasks presented to us. We are humbled by your enduring love and forgiveness. We are thankful that you do not listen to our voice and our stumbling sentences that we force together, but listen instead to the words of our hearts during our time of open prayer and reflection of our omissions and sins. We pray that we be in your presence and live following your will. Amen.