A Prayer for the Day — March 12, 2025
Rev. Dr. Garrett J. Andrew

My Lord and my Friend,
I long for the mountaintop moments,
for the hush of higher ground,
for the glow that gives me back to myself,
away from the clamor and clutter,
the jostling, jangling, joyless noise of the world below.

I crave the quiet,
the whispered wonder,
the burning brightness that does not burn me out.
I want to stand where the air is thin,
where breath slows and silence sings,
where the world is distant enough to forget
that it ever demanded something of me.

And you, too, sought these spaces,
slipping away from the crowds,
climbing toward the solitude,
letting the wind whip at your robe
as you stood between
the sky and
the soil.

So I follow.
I set my feet upon the rock,
I gaze at the golden glow,
I stand with Peter, giddy and grasping, saying,
“It is so very good that we are here.”

Let me build something.
Let me stay.
Let me sit in the holy hush of the mountaintop
where the world cannot wound me.
Let me keep this moment—
let me make it forever.

But you do not stay.
The voice of Eternity does not command stillness.
It does not tell me to build.
It only says:
“Listen to him.”

So teach me to listen,
to hear you in the high places,
and to heed you when you call me to the low ones.

For you turn toward the valley,
toward the dust-drenched roads,
toward the tangled streets teeming with pain.

You say: “We are going down now.”
You say: “You are the light of the world.”

But I do not feel like light.
I feel like a candle flickering in the wind,
a matchstick too small to matter,
a firefly that the night will surely swallow.

Still, you step forward.
Still, you go.

So I step, too.
Into the shadowed streets where sorrow sits.
Into the dust-choked corners where grief gathers.
Into the rooms where rage trembles, where loneliness lingers,
where pain has made a home in the forgotten places, and
where injustice insists its somehow good.

I step into the valley
where death casts its longest shadow,
where suffering speaks and no one listens,
where hope is a threadbare thing.

And yet—I shine.
Not like the mountaintop.
Not like the sky split open.
Not like the fire that fell on Sinai.
But like a lamp in a window,
like a flame that flickers but does not fail,
like the light that no darkness can overcome.

So do not let me stay where it is safe.

Do not let me cling to comfort as if it were calling.

Do not let me settle for glimpses of glory
when you are leading me to something greater.

Teach me to listen.
Teach me to go.
Teach me to shine—
not for myself, but for the valley,
for the ones who wait in the dark,
for the ones who need to know
that the light still comes,
that love still lingers, that the way down
is the way forward,
is the way of the cross,
is your way,
is the way of life.

Amen.