An African Prayerbook

I have a number of prayerbooks. This is something one tends to accumulate when one works as a pastor. As a result, these books have built up and sit on my shelves (physical and digital). These books are too-infrequently used, as happens when books spend a certain amount of time on the shelf. But these books contain some beautiful prayers that go unprayed through my neglect. For the next few weeks, I want to go through some of the prayerbooks that I don’t look at often enough and share those with you. Today’s prayers come from An African Prayerbook edited by Desmond Tutu.

Desmond Tutu introduces the book, starting with the story of Adam and Eve. He then says, “This beautiful story tells a fundamental truth about us—that we are made to live in a delicate network of interdependence with one another, with God and with the rest of God's creation. We say in our African idiom: “A person is a person through other persons.” A solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. A totally self-sufficient human being is ultimately subhuman. We are made for complementarity. I have gifts that you do not; and you have gifts that I do not. Voilà! So we need each other to become fully human.

Later in the introduction he shares part of the rationale and structure of this book, “This AFRICAN PRAYER BOOK seeks to provide examples of African Christian and non-Christian spirituality with prayers, poems, litanies, songs, acts of adoration, of thanksgiving and supplication and confession, arrow prayers, blessings and even maledictions, as well as acts of dedication and commitment, together with appropriate quotations from the Bible that belong to us all.”

I’ll share two prayers from this book, though there are so many more that I could share. The first comes from the Masai people in Tanzania:

You Have Our Faith With Our Bodies

Father, thank you for your revelation

about death

and illness

and sorrow.

Thank you for speaking so plainly to us,

for calling us all friends

and hovering over us;

for extending your arms out to us.

We cannot stand on our own;

we fall into death without you.

We fall from faith, left to our own.

We are really friendless without you.

Your extended arms fill us with joy,

expressing love,

love caring and carrying,

asking and receiving our trust.

You have our trust, Father,

and our faith,

with our bodies

and all that we are and possess.

We fear nothing when with you,

safe to stretch out and help others,

those troubled in faith,

those troubled in body.

Father, help us to do with our bodies what we

proclaim,

that our faith be known to you

and to others,

and be effective in all the world.

The second prayer comes from one of the most influential Christian thinkers in the history of our faith, St. Augustine of Hippo:

All shall be Amen and Alleluia.

We shall rest and we shall see,

We shall see and we shall know.

We shall know and we shall love.

We shall love and we shall praise.

Behold our end which is no end.

Peace,

Rev. Jeff Fox-Kline