A REMINDER TO PRAY FOR TEXAS LEGISLATORS

This post includes an eloquent prayer written by the Rev. Whit Bodman, as well as a bit of rationale about Methodists' involvement in the legislative process. Copy the text; format your new document for narrow margins and two columns. Then copy back-to-back and half vertically.

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A Reminder to Pray

For our Texas State Legislators

Remember John Wesley’s admonition:

“There is no religion but social religion;

no holiness, but social holiness.”

It follows, then, that it is one of our Methodist responsibilities to participate in the social life of our community—and this includes our state—in any one of a number of ways, among them praying, voting, lobbying, educating.

To add Texas legislators to your daily prayers, I encourage you to use The Texas Impact Legislative Prayer Calendar for 2015, that may be found at texasimpact.org/pray2015.

In addition to praying for your personal legislators, I urge you to refer to the Calendar for each remaining day of the 84^th Legislature, and pray for the legislator/s listed.

Additionally, you will find in the Calendar eloquent prayers to assist when you flounder.

And I would urge you to consider becoming a member of Texas Impact, if you are not already. Your UMW unit can also be a member, as can your church. The agency was founded in 1973 on the central religious conviction that religious communities are called to minister to the whole person—to respond with compassion to the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of all people. The Texas religious leaders who established Texas Impact believed that such a ministry couldn’t be performed adequately without a concern for basic social problems at the state government level.

Member organizations include Christian denominational bodies, regional Jewish and Muslim social justice committees, and local interfaith councils.

As We Are

O Beloved of the Beloved, what can we say to thee?

We are as we are:

Sometimes plump and self-satisfied, having no need of thee;

Sometimes crippled and self-satisfied, having no love for thee;

Sometimes empty and afraid, having no trust in thee.

We are as we are:

Seldom having sought thee seriously,

Seldom having listened to thee earnestly,

Seldom having followed thee faithfully.

We are as we are.

Enter us, O spirit of power and gentleness.

Astonish us. Overcome us. Uproot us.

Fill us with this earthy fruit and heavenly hospitality.

But starve us for thee, lest we sate ourselves with ourselves, and fail to quest for thee.

We are as we are, but not as we can be.

Bend us toward one another—Jew, Baha’i, Muslim, whatever the shape of our faith.

Lift us beyond the terror of difference to the delight of difference.

Nourish us now on this sweet fare of our neighbor’s words and smiles,

For in them is a taste of the feast that is to come,

Once we no longer are as we are.

Amen.

                                    --Rev. Dr. Whit Bodman

                            Texas Impact Board President