Renew our days
The prayer at the wilderness's end
Listen to a prayer rising at the very end of a wilderness, the last words of a book that has held nothing but grief for five long chapters. The city is rubble, the songs are gone, the people have wept until weeping ran dry, and then, from the bottom of all of it, the book of Lamentations turns its face upward and asks one thing. Turn us back to yourself, LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days. Notice what it does not ask. It does not beg to go back, to rewind to the days before the catastrophe, to undo the years and pretend they never happened. It asks God to renew the days, to make them new on the far side rather than restore the old ones. And notice who does the turning. Not the praying soul, straining to right itself one more time; the soul has stopped trying to turn itself and is asking God to do the turning. The disorientation does not close with the wilderness magically undone. It closes with a turning, a worn-out people handing the work over, and reaching, even from the bottom, for a morning when they will be satisfied at last.
“Turn us to yourself, LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.”
— Jeremiah — Lamentations 5:21 (WEB)
“Satisfy us in the morning with your lovingkindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”
This is the hinge. Disorientation closes here, the wilderness handed over and the new bearings about to be given. The phase does not end with the desert undone but with a turning, a soul that quits righting itself and asks God to do it. What it asks is the surrender that opens onto Reorientation: turn me, renew me, satisfy me in the morning.
As your own wilderness closes, this is the prayer for it, and it is not the one you might expect. You will be tempted to pray for a return, to ask God to give you back the life you had before the upheaval, to set the clock to a morning before everything broke. This prayer asks for something better and harder: not rewind, but renewal. Not the old days handed back, but new days given. And it changes who is doing the work.
You have spent the whole wilderness trying to turn yourself, to fix it, to climb out by your own strength, and you are exhausted by the effort because it was never yours to do. So hand it over. Turn me, Lord, for I cannot turn myself; renew my days; satisfy me at last in the morning. Stop trying to turn yourself and ask God to turn you, because that is the one prayer the worn out can still pray, and it is the prayer He answers. Satisfy me, finally, in the morning. He turns the ones who stop turning themselves and ask.
At the end of a long wilderness the whole Church faces the same hinge, and the same temptation: to pray its way backward, to beg for the recovery of a golden age of fuller pews and unquestioned standing, rather than to be made new. The Body can no more manufacture its own renewal than a worn-out exile could end captivity by trying harder. It can only turn and ask God to do the turning. Every true renewal across the centuries has begun here, not in a clever recovery plan but in a Church on its knees asking to be made new on the far side of what it lost. The recurring rummage sale does not undo the desert; it opens onto fresh bearings. This prayer is the threshold.
What cannot be shaken is the God who turns the ones who ask. Wildernesses end and the old days never come back, but the prayer turn us is never wasted breath. He renews; that is His nature, and no shaking touches it. When you cannot turn yourself, the One who can is already at work.
- Am I praying to go back to before the upheaval, or to be renewed on the far side of it?
- Where am I still exhausting myself trying to turn what only God can turn?
- Can I hand over the turning and simply ask Him to do it?
Lord, I have worn myself out trying to turn myself, and I cannot. I will not ask You to rewind the days I lost. Renew them instead. Turn me back to Yourself, for I am unable, and satisfy me at last in the morning. At the end of the wilderness, I hand it over. Amen.