Help Me to Push Myself Aside

Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.

I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.

(from A Prayer Journal by Flannery O'Connor; photo by NASA via everystockphoto.com)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is a good prayer. I guess I don't think about others struggling like this, just myself. BTW! Your description of a crescent moon is not correct. It is not the Earth's shadow, it is the position of the moon to the sun, that makes the shade we see. The Earth's shadow is on the moon in an eclipse.