God of deep hunger,
We thank you for being a God who is unconcerned with spiritual practices that don’t affirm the dignity of the most vulnerable.
Keep us from shallow spiritualties that are more concerned with obedience to ritual than how that ritual should bring about justice and restoration in the world.
Retrain our appetites toward healing and liberation. If we fast this Lent, let it be in the ancient way, which gives our portions to the hungry and oppressed. And if we have need, let this be a season of reclamation, that we would accept what is owed to us, that we would take all that our dignity demands.
Grant that we would find out own healing magnified as we participate in the healing of the cosmos.
And let our darkest nights amply the light, that we would look up and see no less than the very face of God in one another. Amen
*Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley