You Turn Tables

Our mothers and fathers
have long spoken of you.
And we have their spokenness in our hands,
in these old texts.
We propose now to study you,
to weigh and test,
to examine and assess,
to make you our "object"
and so to get a grade.
In your strangeness,
you are studied only temporarily
object only penultimately,
weighed and tested only at the outset.
But then - as always -
You turn tables,
You become subject who addresses,
sovereign who commands,
mother who loves,
warrior who defends,
And we find ourselves turned in our study to praise and adoration.
So we ask for freedom to love you with our minds,
that we may know a little as we are known,
and in knowing may love and adore,
and in loving and adoring, may obey...
to your praise,
and our joy, Amen.

(from Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: The Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, by way of the Daily Prayer blog. The background of the photo is explained here, on the Hither & Yon blog)