Each day before General Synod gathers in Tucson, we’ll share a new prayer, devotional, or poem submitted by one of RfA’s board members, themed on the Fruits of the Spirit.
We also invite you to join us in praying for the delegates and members of the General Synod (the full list can be found here).
Today, we’re specifically holding those found on pages 12 and 13 in prayer (these include a few of the delegates from classes within the Regional Synod of the Heartland, all those within the Regional Synod of Mid-America, and most of those within the Regional Synod of the Mid-Atlantics).
Today’s prayer is a poem by the Harlem Renaissance poet Frank Horne, titled “Patience,” and submitted by board member Oscar Reynaga.
Frank Horne
Patience…patience
they all say…
but will patience
climb up a stair
or pick up a spoon
or chant a litany?
…those hollows
worn in a cathedral step
by the long slow prayers
of countless worshippers kneeling…
But do I not have a hundred years
nor forty
nor ten-
O you they call Eternal
to whom a thousand years
are but the wink of a languid eye-
help me to crowd
years of patient trial
and error
into the few flying days
I have…
Lend me but a jot
of Your aeon-packed
eternity
compress its infinite patience
into hours
and minutes
if it be Thy will
and the paean of my earthly gratitude
will reach up
and shake the very pillars
of the everlasting heavens…
Oscar Reynaga