Abbie’s (Abbie Walters, a McCracken daughter) home church is Newberg Friends, but she lives 3,000 miles away. Her church home in Tampa, Florida, is the Presbyterian Church of Seffner (aka Seffner Pres). It quickly became a wonderful faith community for Abbie and Andrew.

Confession is a regular part of the Sunday service at Seffner Pres. My religious circles haven’t done much with confession. I’m guessing that the holiness movement theorized that we confessed our sins when we got saved and after we were sanctified we quit sinning—thus no need for confession. That didn’t match my experience and I was delighted when I discovered many years ago "Prayers of Confession" in our hymnal (Hymns for the Family of God, #423). This prayer and the “Assurance of Pardon” that follows are nicely sandwiched in the hymnal between John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” and “Cleanse Me” by J. Edwin Orr. The prayer of confession and assurance of pardon are from two Presbyterians—Howard Childers and Kenneth Working. On the two sides of this sandwich are a Quaker and a revivalist/holiness advocate—all of this on two facing pages.

Now moving from the hymnal back to Abbie and Seffner Pres. Yesterday I got a message from Abbie saying: “I thought you might appreciate this. I got to thinking how it could be applied to differing views on homosexuality.” The attachment was the prayer of confession from their Sunday morning bulletin. It read as follows:

Almighty God, we confess that we continue to try to put You in a box. We tell others how to know You. We believe our way is the only way. We do not recognize You in the face of others or look for You at work in other people around us. Forgive us for thinking we have a corner on the truth. You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Break open our box. Tear down our walls. Breathe into us the newness of life in the Spirit. (adapted from www.textweek.com by Loli Reiter, pastor, Presbyterian Church of Seffner)

Yes, Abbie, I do appreciate this and I found it helpful to replace the plural pronouns with the singular form, even though that made it a bit more pointed and uncomfortable.