GroshLink

O Lord,
no day of my life has passed

that has not proved me guilty in your sight.

Prayers have been uttered from a prayer less heart;
Praise has been often praise less sound;
My best services are filthy rags.
Blessed Jesus, let me find a covert in thy appeasing wounds.
Though my sins rise to the heaven, your merits soars above them;
Though my unrighteousness weighs me down to hell,
thy your righteousness exalts me to your throne.
All things in me call for my rejection,
All things in thee pleasd my acceptance.
I appeal from the throne of perfect justice

to thy throne of boundless grace,

Grant me to hear thy voice assuring me:

that by thy stripes I am healed
that thou wast bruised for my inquities,
that thou hast been made sin for me
that might be righteous in thee,
that my grievous sins, my manifold sins,
are all forgiven,
buried in the ocean of thy concealing blood.

I am guilty, but pardoned,

lost, but saved,
wandering, but found,
sinning, but cleansed.

Give me perpetual broken-heartedness,
Keep me always clinging to thy cross,
Flood me every moment with descending grace,
Open to me the springs of divine knowledge,

sparkling like crystal,
flowing clear and unsullied
through my wilderness of life.

 -- Arthur Bennett, editor. VALLEY OF VISION: A COLLECTION OF PURITAN PRAYERS AND DEVOTIONS. Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Banner of Truth Trust, 2003 (first published in 1975), p. 28. ISBN 0-85151-821-4. 

Part of The Broken Heart was used as the congregational prayer on 1/11 at Elizabethtown Brethren in Christ, which was timely for those who explored with me the 2nd Letter in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters.  During our conversation, we considered conversion and our daily lives lived

before our Father
in the Spirit
guided by the Word
with the eyes & mind of Christ
as part (and accountable to) the Body of Christ through time, geography, and space
in the face of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Next week we'll move into Letter III, on prayer.  Note:  Another prayer from the VALLEY OF VISION: A COLLECTION OF PURITAN PRAYERS AND DEVOTIONS posted on groshlink at The Gift of Gift.