Lord Have Mercy

By Nada Hatem

Lord, have mercy on us,

Lord, won’t you forgive us?

We sinned against you, Lord; drench us with your mercies.

For many years, we stayed away from you,

We fought evil with evil, carrying high the torch of inequity.

You stood at the doors of our hearts, knocking with your loving hand,

Desiring to enter in, despite our enmity.

You wanted to enter our homes, to bless and shepherd us,

To revive what died within us and rebuild what was broken!

You wanted to share our lives and fellowship with us,

And also with your peace fill our tormented lives.

But, we rudely shut the door in your face,

Leaving you in the cold of the night,

You kept on knocking and pleading to let you in, but to no avail.

Our hardened hearts rejected you, and told you to stay away!

You went to our schools, to be with our children,

To hug them, to love them, to protect and bless them.

You loved the little ones, so you could teach them how to love,

And how to live holy lives through our inheritance

Your precious Holy Word.

But what did we do? We chased you out of our schools,

We threw in your face your precious holy book

The book of mercy, truth, and love

The book of life the book from above.

Our children could no longer pray in this land of ours,

Lord won’t you forgive us and forgive our ignorance?

We fought your Word because we listened to those who brainwashed us,

And told us your holy book will poison our children!

We believed them and became worse than they are

We hurled at you the worst insults and attacked your holy person,

And in our zealous ways, told you to leave us alone,

To get away from us.

That in our ignorance made you the – the LOVING GOD – our worst enemy!

So, now you left our schools too, just as you reluctantly left before,

Our homes and churches because we wanted so,

We were even embarrassed by carrying your most holy name—Jesus;

We began to compromise, to discuss, to philosophize who you might be,

We mixed you with other gods, and put you on the same level,

Claiming that we all worship the same God in heavens

As long as we believed in some kind of man made god,

A god we created out of convenience, blindness, or sheer pride.

We were also coward, and thought it is a shame

To believe in you or proclaim your Holy name,

Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God

The giver of life eternal, Name above all Names!

For many years, we refused and rejected you,

We denied you with our words and deeds

With our shaky faith we marred your image,

And in our small thinking, we dwarfed you.

For many years we disobeyed you, belittled your mercy,

Your love, and patience and long suffering.

For this we made you weep, suffer, and be crucified again!

Just like yesterday… I saw you sitting

Atop a skyscraper, shedding a tear over this land,

Looking somber and sad over what happened

To your last fort of faith and the land of the free,

And with a broken heart, you said:

“Oh, how many times I wanted to gather your children as a hen would gather its chicks under its wings,

But you refused; and hence, I will leave your house in ruins.”

No, no, no, please Lord Jesus, don’t say it; it is very frightening!

We beg you not to leave this land; whatever we do, we cannot live without you,

Without your blessing, we are doomed and mercilessly helpless.

Lord, forgive us and shower us with your mercy today,

Cleanse our hearts and our land,

We sinned against you, Lord; forgive us.

We repent!

Originally written by Nada Jabbour Hatem

(Translated from the original Arabic by B. Hatem)

In memory of September 11, 2001