There’s a wonderful verse in the first book of Samuel that never fails to inspire me. ‘ The Lord,’ it tells us, ‘does not see as people see. They look at appearances, but he sees into the heart’ ( 1 Samuel 16:7b). More wonderful still – as the following prayer from my book Poems to Help You Pray explores – is the fact that, knowing and understanding us more deeply than any other, ours also is a God who loves us we are.
You see me as no one else starts to,
the person concealed deep inside,
the weaknesses, faults and temptations,
the defects I’d much rather hide.
You see me laid bare of pretension,
the surface veneer stripped away,
the failings I cannot quite conquer
exposed to the cold light of day.
And yet you continue to love me,
your mercy and grace shining through;
despite all the times that I fail you,
you carry on making me new.
Such love is too awesome to credit,
like no other love that I know,
but though, Lord, I can’t quite believe it,
you show me each day it is so.