Ceding Our End To You

"We confess, when we ponder your large governance,
That our 'chief end' is to
glorify you and enjoy you forever.
We confess that the purpose of our life, purposes twinned,
are your glory and our joy. That is our true end!
But when we come to the end of our work together, and
the end of our text together,
It strikes us that we know less about 'ends' than we imagine.
We sing our explanatory doxologies,
We reiterate our concluding slogan that
'thine is the kingdom and the glory and the power.'
We add our confident, loud 'Amen' to our best petitions.
But--truth to tell--
We cannot see the end;
when we do see the end, we do not know its meaning...
whether termination or transition.
And so, like our many fathers and mothers always,
We trust where we cannot see,
eating what we are fed,
taking what of recognition we can muster,
restless and present under a myriad of surveillances,
but finally ceding our end to you,
in our simple, final prayer:
Come Lord Jesus
Come among us,
Come to your church in bewilderment,
Come to our state in its vexation,
Come to our world in its insomnia
Grant us peace with Justice,
peace with joy,
peace at last,
peace on earth... and glory to you in the highest. Amen."
-Walter Brueggemann, November 2, 2001 (from Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth page 130)

"In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Evil-Merodach became king of Babylon, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah and freed him from prison on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month. He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king's table. Day by day the king of Babylon gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived, till the day of his death." (Jeremiah 52:31-34)

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