The Better to Know

Lord,
you stab me
with the beauties
of your world.

Yesterday it happened again.
I listened to birdcalls
in treetops, bushes, and bending grass,
walked barefoot in the morning dew,
eavesdropped on concerts and conversations
of the summer woodland.

Lord, prick me
with rose petal, sunset, and dawn;
assail me with sight and smell and sound;
torment me with shape and texture and taste.
Lord, make me bleed,
the better to know,
the greater to be,
the more to find myself in You.

(a prayer of Gerhard E. Frost, from his book, Blessed is the Ordinary, p. 65)