“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
Joel 2:12

O Lord,
No day of my life has passed
that has not proved me guilty in Your sight,
Prayers have been uttered from a prayerless heart;
Praise has been often praiseless sound;
My best services are filthy rags.
Blessed Jesus, let me find a hiding place in Your appeasing wounds.
Though my sins rise to heaven Your merits soar above them;
Though unrighteousness weighs me down to hell,
Your righteousness exalts me to Your throne.
All things in me call for my rejection,
All things in You plead for my acceptance.
I appeal from the throne of perfect justice
to Your throne of boundless grace.
Grant me to hear Your voice assuring me;
that by Your stripes I am healed,
that You were bruised for my iniquities,
that You have been made sin for me
that I might be righteous in You,
that my grievous sins, my many sins,
are all forgiven,
buried in the ocean of Your concealing blood.
I am guilty, but pardoned,
lost, but saved,
wandering, but found,
sinning, but cleansed.
Give me perpetual broken-heartedness,
Keep me always clinging to Your cross,
Flood me every moment with descending grace,
Open to me the springs of divine knowledge,
sparkling like crystal,
flowing clear and unsullied
through my wilderness of life.

Taken from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), p. 83.

In a culture obsessed with self-improvement and a society where narcissism is a value, how do we consciously embrace brokenness? Only by the work of God’s Spirit in our lives. May it happen to each of us this Lent.

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