Book of Common Prayer: Litany of Penitence

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:


During this season of Lent, the time of the church calendar when Christians prepare their hearts and souls for Easter, I have been personalizing the errors mentioned in the Litany of Penitence, which liturgical congregations pray on Ash Wednesday. I’ve been impressed that I have not been considering my soul as I ought, and this formal prayer of repentance was a good place to begin.

So last week, I took the first confession and began to work with it. “We confess to You, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the price, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.”

This is what I wrote in an extended time of self-examination early one morning (about 3:30 a.m.) when the house and the phone and the world outside are silent.

I confess to You my past unfaithfulness…

• Watching too much mindless television; comes from fatigue; when I sleep only five hours per night, I collapse in the afternoon and try to stay awake until 9:00, but these are wasted hours, which I fill with movies or television, captured by my physical ennui.

• Not working to keep my body strong, which sometimes helps me sleep and eliminates sleep deprivation. With good sleep I can go strong all day, and keep functioning in the evening. I know this, but don’t work on it.

• Not working @what it is You have put in my mind to do; writing, painting, design projects, etc.

I confess to You my past unfaithfulness…

• Not working out areas of spiritual obedience

- better and more regular Bible study
- Sabbath Eve. practice
- reading daily offices of prayer with David

For all these things (unfaithfulness; lack of obedience) I am truly sorry and do most humbly repent. Strength, please, to carry out my desires before You and to carry out Your desires for me.

This is work, isn’t it, and I am only on the first sin of unfaithfulness, then there are sub-sins (the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.) Oh, dear.

Today during the Eucharistic service, a young woman stood beside the cross that is at the back of the school gym where we meet to worship. “Can I pray with you?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” she answered. “How can I pray?”

“Pray for my many areas of unfaithfulness.” Well, I certainly knew what that was about. So we prayed.

I suspect that one of the reasons so many of us have a hard time discovering the work of God in our lives is that we have not done the work of self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial. When we do that work, God is there, standing beside a young woman hugging the Cross in the back of the elementary-school gym where a certain people gather to worship.

I spy God!