40 Days 2023

Day 10 – Vision

I have a bit of a procrastination problem. Why do today what I could do at the very last minute? As I get older and my responsibilities become more and more daunting, I struggle to keep up. I know that avoiding urgent tasks will only make my life more difficult later on, but it’s still so much easier to just avoid. To disassociate. To escape.
Why attempt to tackle hard things or confront pain when you could binge-watch television or scroll through 15-second videos for hours? (Or both, simultaneously?) My reflex toward numbness, towards escaping every time life becomes difficult, can be fulfilled so easily. I have an infinite array of distractions to choose from.
So, it is with this frustration and anxiety that I come to the Lord’s Prayer.
The tenth prayer of May It Be So is one of Justin McRoberts’ meditations on the words “Hallowed be Your name.” I know these words by heart, reciting them each week from my pew, but this prayer changed my perspective.
I had always seen this second line as passive, a pause built into the beginning of the prayer for us to ground ourselves in truth. But as I read this prayer, I realized that this is both a pause and a plea – “May I have vision.”
The illustration that accompanies this prayer is a telescope with a heart for a lens, perched atop a rowboat in stormy seas. A lens of love is what will keep you steady amidst a storm.
When I turned to this page and read this prayer, I immediately recognized that it needed to be my prayer too.
The vision that I pray for is a shift in perspective. This vision is given its clarity through the essential fact of God – God’s holiness, God’s unblemished hope and unconditional love for humanity.
On my best days, I am able to remember God’s all-encompassing love despite the trials and distractions, and this is a source of strength. By recognizing that we are surrounded by grace and love that is greater than the chaos, I have the strength to face what is difficult.
This vision also requires humility. I must recognize that my trials are nothing in comparison to God’s trials, watching God’s beloved children create and endure suffering on earth. God knows intimately the ugliness of humanity, and still God is love.
When I am confronted by the world’s ugliness, or, far more unsettling, my own ugliness, my one duty is to remember that God is there with me, enveloping us all in love.
I am vulnerable and flawed, but I do not have to cower in the fear that I am walking through life alone. By the grace of God, I can choose also to respond in grace, to myself and to others, although it is hard and humbling work.
To honor the holiness of God’s name, I must move around the world as if we were all beloved by God.
This vision of love turns everything upside down.
This vision of love is our strength in the storm.

Karenna Brand is a junior at La Sierra Academy, and is immensely grateful that she got to grow up surrounded by love and grace in the La Sierra community.