Lord, I come to You unfinished,
the way morning comes before the light is full,
gray and reaching, not yet what it will be.

I have tried to follow the thread You laid down
and found my hands empty at evening,
the day behind me scattered like seed I could not place correctly.

Is this what it means to be human before You,
to feel the gap between the wanting and the doing,
the love intended, and the love expressed?

Paul knew this ache.
He wrote it plainly, without shame,
the war inside a faithful man, the things undone,
the things done poorly.

So maybe this is not a sign of distance.
Maybe the very longing is a kind of prayer,
the hollow in the chest that knows what fullness is
because You put it there.

I do not ask to feel sufficient.
I ask only to keep turning toward You
the way a plant does not think about the sun
but grows there anyway, helplessly, without argument.

Let my shortcoming be the space where grace has room to enter.
Let my reaching be enough of a yes.
Let the ache itself be sacred,
the proof that something in me still knows the difference,
still cares, still wants to close the distance
between who I am and who You made me for.

I am unfinished, Lord.
But I am here.

And here, I think,
is where You work.