Your Constancy is greater than my fickleness - Part Two

A psalm of Robert the servant of the LORD, a prayer for a heart that is single-minded and free from deceit. To an improvisation on the music of ‘In Church’ by Pyotr (Peter) Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Musicians: Christiane von Albrecht and Jo Garcia You are trustworthy, tried and true; While I, as changeable as a weathervane, and only too capable of saying one thing but meaning and doing quite another, often blowing needlessly hot or needlingly cold. Lord of quite remarkable forbearance, Let me yield no place to thoughts and attitudes, or utter words that should find no welcome in my heart. Lord, you know only too well the many ways in which I fail You; The times I fret and worry, and fail to trust You. The times I speak ill of others, neither seeing Your call on their lives, nor heeding Your warning that if I bite and devour others, I risk being destroyed in turn by them. (Gal. 5:15) The times I lash out, shrill and vindictive, my sensitivities bristling like so many quills, or, preferring to sulk, allowing bitter roots of resentment to inject its poison into my heart. Since my conscience and my actions lie exposed before You Lord; how dare I set out to deceive? For the sake of Your glory, and for love of those with whom I have to deal, let my conscience be swift to welcome Your correction. Oh God, will You help me to cleanse my hands and purify my heart from these sins that lie crouching at the door? (Jas. 4:8, Gen. 4:7) Teach me to see off bears and wolves, and to wrestle with other wild beasts – but also to recognise the seductive murmur of the siren serpent that led Demas to fall in love with the world and to turn away from serving You, and Judas to pin his hopes on agendas that were never Yours. There are many fierce beasts, Lord, and many people have fallen prey; many whose hearts have exchanged truth for a lie and fickle flattery that embraces dark and shifting shadows. You warned us that in the last days, deceitfulness would arise in many forms – not least when good people take on board beliefs that Heaven cannot own. Yet You choose to allow the wheat and the tares to grow together, and You ask that we remain true to our calling and constant in Your constancy. Fickleness and deception soon harden into a shameful constancy that is deeply resistant to the love notes and warnings that You send. Spare me from the fate of Lot’s wife, casting her gaze backwards when You are summoning me upward and onward! Let my heart not crystallise in regret like ‘a pillar of salt standing as a monument to my unbelief! (Wisdom 10:7) Oh God, will You set free many hearts that flit and flutter, and are so easily misled? Draw us instead to a place of constancy in You.