Prayer of someone who is looking for God
God — if you are there, and if you are listening: I do not know the proper way to address you, and I am going to speak anyway. I did not choose the house I was born in, or the words I was taught to pray in, or the price my family would pay if I changed them. You know all of that better than I do. I am not asking for a sign I could show to anybody else. I am asking for the truth, even if the truth costs me. If Jesus Christ is who the Christians say he is, let me know it — not by an argument, which I can always defeat, but the way a face is known. If I am wrong, correct me. If I am close, come the rest of the way, because I cannot. And if what you are asking of me is more than I can carry alone, send me one person. One is enough. I will not pretend I am not afraid. Come anyway. Amen.
Pass it on
When this prayer is prayed
For anyone standing outside a door they have not decided to open — and it is written to be said by them, not about them. There is no line in it that a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu or someone who believes nothing would have to lie to say, and nobody needs permission to say it. Philip found the Ethiopian on a desert road, reading a book he could not understand; the man asked one question and was baptised at the next water they came to.