Desperate prayer

"Lord, have mercy. The sea is so vast, and my boat is so small."

When life seems too much - too complex, too scary, too unpredictable, and yes, too exhausting, I come back to this prayer. It's traditionally called the prayer of the Breton fishermen. It's a prayer for those who feel out of their depth. A cry of the heart when the waves keep coming and every one of them gets bigger. 

It may have come as a prayer of desperation, hope clinging to an old story of disciples in a storm, the sea of Galilee a frenzy of destructive forces. And Jesus asleep.

Like the sea, long periods of life can be calm, navigable, predictable, and relatively safe. Then weather patterns change and the sea transforms into threat, and we rediscover our finitude, our limits, our humanity; we are reminded of what we can't do, what we don't know, and what we cannot control.

This brief one-line prayer asks for mercy, but does not tell God what to do. At most it points out the obvious, the vast realities we face, and the limited resources at our disposal. God already knows all that. But it is deeply human to cry out for help, for mercy, for something that pushes the balance of fear towards faith, despair towards hope, and transforms that sinking feeling into a sense of being held.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation