Other Prayers Addressed To The Same Holy Listener
A Prayer: You Three Times Holy
The vast company of heaven—
cherubim, angels, seraphim, archangels—
gather especially to sing your praises loudly.
Their constant refrain is,
“Holy, holy, holy,”
Three times, not more, not less than three.
So we are able to echo their singing as we join in,
“Holy, holy, holy,”
Three times, not more, not less than three.
We sing that you are ineffable,
incomprehensible,
undecodable,
inaccessible,
a “tremendous mystery.”
In Christian parlance, we take this threefold articulation
to match
our three ways of knowing you to be God.
We say “holy” to the Father,
the source and ending of all our being,
you before time, after time, in, with, and under
all times,
Alpha and Omega who loves the world into existence
It is your will that permits our world to be.
We say “holy” to the Son,
the one born in a barn,
the one who had nowhere to lay his head,
who went about doing good,
who healed the disabled and restored the
disadvantaged,
who bested empires and the rulers of this age,
who humbled himself to die on a cross,
executed as a common criminal,
executed and now risen to authority.
We say “holy” to the Spirit,
The wind that blew back chaos,
the force of freedom that made an escape path
in the sea;
the agent of instruction, guidance, and transformation,
the disturber of our easy peace,
the one who stirs our lives to new witness
and new duty.
We chisel away at your unutterable holiness . . .
we add modifiers . . .
love, justice, faithfulness, compassion, steadfastness,
all true, all good, all important for our life,
but then, yet again, none as thick or daring or bewildering
as “holy.”
In singing this three times, we acknowledge that you
do not fit our categories,
you do not participate in our equations;
you do not accommodate our explanatory yearnings.
You three times holy!
Yet you elude us;
we catch glimpses and yearn to touch and taste
and know;
and you are there, beyond our control, overwhelming
us in awe. Amen.
A Prayer: Your Cosmic Pledge of Disarmament
The report of the flood you caused is not forgotten.
We remember well the torrential rains that swept all
before them,
torrents that swept away so many of your well-beloved
creatures.
Walls of water overran the good order of your
creation.
Your flood lasted so long—
some said forty days,
some said 150 days,
after so much water, the length of the threat
does not matter very much.
We also remember the end of your flood,
the emergence of dry land,
the recovery of creaturely life around the world.
You uttered your lordly assurance:
that the rhythms of the world would not be
disrupted,
we could count on
summer and winter,
cold and heat,
seedtime and harvest,
day and night.
Beyond that, we remember your attentive gesture
of assurance:
The appearance of a rainbow;
you hung up your bow;
you retired your weapon;
you engaged in disarmament,
signaling the end of hostility between
you and your creation.
In that moment of your disarmament,
you decided you would govern in a “more excellent
way,”
by the generosity of love,
by the reliability of restorative justice,
by the lavishness of your forgiveness.
You would not govern by fear;
rather you would run the endless risk of the excellent
way of self-giving.
We see your more excellent way all through your
history:
We see it in the exodus and your solidarity with
the enslaved;
We smell it in the manna bread of wilderness;
We know it in the pathos of the prophets.
Finally, we see your self-giving agency embodied
in Jesus of Nazareth
who required his own leader to put up his sword,
yet more disarmament.
The savagery goes on
amid the predatory superpowers,
amid the brutal struggles for territory and resources,
amid our ignoble disputes with our neighbors.
Your weapon has been retired and suspended in
midair for a long time,
lingering for us to decode its meaning.
You have renounced violent ways.
Peace indeed!
Peace not “beginning with me,”
but with the Lord of the flood.
We are awed by new possibilities. Amen.
A Prayer: You with the Long Nose
Among the best-loved and most-often-reiterated
recitals concerning you is first on the lips of Moses:
“The Lord, the Lord,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”
(Exod. 34:6–7)
This often-repeated formula witnesses your eager
solidarity with us and with your entire creation.
Among the reassuring terms of your recital is the
phrase “slow to anger.”
The phrase is a flat, uninspired translation of a compelling
phrase in Hebrew,
a phrase declaring you, our well-beloved God, to
have long nostrils,
a long nose.
Your long nose requires you to inhale and exhale at
great length to renew your breath.
You are, sometimes, the God who breathes the fire
of anger and indignation,
and we can imagine a flow of fire from your nose.
Except that your nostrils are long;
the fire cools,
the anger subsides;
the indignation wanes.
By the time your flame of rage reaches outside your
nose,
it has cooled.
It has cooled so that you can recover your balance.
It has cooled enough for you to reassert your long-
running resolve to be
a God who practices steadfast love and faithfulness.
We are glad for your long nose;
We are glad for your cooling nostrils;
We are grateful that the rage and indignation do not last,
not for long,
not through the night,
not into the next day.
We are thankful that we know you at your best,
free from anger beyond a short temper,
patient even with our recurring waywardness.
The myths are filled with tales concerning gods who
manipulate and goddesses who deceive;
But you are not like that;
You are not underhanded or secretive in your
governance;
You are your own true self every time;
You are a reliable presence in our common life.
You move among us with equilibrium and great
resolve on our behalf.
And we are on the receiving end of the breath of
life you give.
In our inhaling we become capable of generous fidelity.
Your long nose of fire is but a mere footnote to your
long life-giving commitment to the world that you love.
It turns out that we — not unlike you — are capable of
forgiveness when we have cooled from our indignation.
Move in and through our anger, cooling us enough
to participate in your life-giving breath.
We are grateful that we may be alongside you as
we cool enough to care in generative ways. Move us
past our hot noses to do the good work cooled noses
make possible. Amen.
A Prayer: Fresh from the Word
(On Reading Isaiah 55:10–13)
At the outset there was the silence of despair.
And then You spoke:
You said, “Let there be light.”
You said, “Let my people go.”
You said, “Comfort, comfort my people.”
Your word became flesh before our very eyes:
Light became creation;
Emancipation became covenant people;
Comfort became homecoming.
Your word is not empty, but full of futures.
You said, “Love God,” and we are summoned.
You said, “Love neighbor,” and we are implicated.
You said, “Follow me,” and we are on a different
way with you.
Your word, in its life-giving power, addresses us
every day.
Your word, in its life-dispatching force, empowers
us every day.
Your word, in its restorative passion, makes new
every day.
We are creatures of your word;
we cannot be otherwise;
we would not choose to be otherwise.
It is because of your faithful word that we are on our
way . . . rejoicing;
on our way in freedom, mercy, compassion, and justice,
on our way to neighborly well-being,
on our way rejoicing. Amen.
Excerpted from “God of All Promises: A Poetic Pilgrimage through Genesis” by Walter Brueggemann. Copyright 2026. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press.
