@wdavidotaylor
Associate Professor of Theology & Culture @fullerseminary. Author: "Prayers for the Pilgrimage" + "A Body of Praise" + "Open & Unafraid." IG: @davidtaylor_theologian. W: https://www.wdavidotaylor.com.
A Prayer for the Exhausted:
O Lord, you who set the world’s chaos right, be a sanctuary for the exhausted and exposed this day, so that they might sense your care by day and sing your song of deliverance by night. We pray this in your good and gentle name. Amen.
(“Prayers for the Pilgrimage”)
This is what happens when a famous actor (named Timothée Chalamet) mouths off about the ostensibly moribund state of ballet & opera: They come back at him with the cleverest and, in some cases, sincerest clapbacks, from Doja Cat to Misty Copeland to the Royal Ballet and Opera.😆
A Prayer for the Vulnerable who cannot defend themselves against all the denigrating and dehumanizing forces of our world.
It's such a beautiful story.
We live in a world that's a mix of Huxley & Orwell’s nightmarish visions. The people in power deceive & dissemble, while the people w/o power benumb themselves with distractions because it’s all too much to bear. So we plead with the Almighty to intervene: Act now, O God, and defend the defenseless.
Just watched the Academy Award-nominated animated short film, “FOREVERGREEN.” It’s a creation care-themed story that meets the sweet-sad tones of Pixar at its best. Such a lovely film.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4EP...
Lots of folks are walking around with the burden of things they’ve said or done, or left unsaid and undone, that have harmed others or themselves. Might we be a safe and trusting presence for them to come clean this day?
Reading the news of the day can tempt us to despair, and despair’s insidious effect is to rob us of the ability to care by numbing us to the grief of our neighbors and to the horror of real-time tragedies that play out in our own backyards as well as across the planet. And so we pray….
Really love Grace Pouch’s new book:
“Instant gratification has an unholy power to warp how our children think and feel. It muddies the clear, delicious water of expectancy and turns it into exasperation—a sour drink that makes waiting sheer misery.”
www.christianitytoday.com/2026/03/joy-...
A Prayer Against the Boasting of Rulers & the Pridefulness of Nations:
(via "Prayers for the Pilgrimage")
What's the calling of a believer artist? Amongst other things, such an artist “must have love for the people for whom the work is meant, for the material he uses, for the subject he chooses, for the truth he is going to express, for the Lord he is serving.”
— Hans Rookmaaker (1970)
There is a time for speaking and shouting, and there is a time for silence. A Prayer from Lamentations 3:
"It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord...
To sit alone in silence
when the Lord has imposed it,
to put one’s mouth to the dust
(there may yet be hope)."
This week’s 90-Second Book Review is of the utterly strange and utterly beautiful novel by Susanna Clarke, "Piranesi." You can see my review here:
www.instagram.com/reel/DVPq1q8...
A Prayer to the God who is Neither Surprised by nor Ashamed of our Neediness:
(via "Prayers for the Pilgrimage")
A Prayer for Being the Healing Touch of Christ this Day:
(via "Prayers for the Pilgrimage")
I’m adopting the practice of praying the same prayer every morning for Lent. It’s called “A Prayer for Being the Limbs of Christ,” and it’s in my prayer book with Phaedra, "Prayers for the Pilgrimage." I’m sharing it here in case anybody else might find this spiritual practice useful.
In the liturgy for Ash Wednesday last night we prayed Isaiah 58 together. I can’t imagine a more important word for followers of Jesus to pray in these distempered times.
Everything hinges on that little word: “if.” If and only if we choose this way. Anything less leads to the Lord’s judgment.
A blessed Ash Wednesday, friends. May we never forget, both great and small, both the powerful and the powerless, that we are dust and to dust we shall return.
(via "Prayers for the Pilgrimage" @ivpress.bsky.social)
Amen: "emotions are not described in the Bible as spontaneous events in the life of the Christian but as 'a form of practice, a way of being, a stance, an orientation, an action to be cultivated, which can transform the self and the world'.”
www.christianitytoday.com/2026/02/emot...
A happy Shrove Tuesday, friends. Enjoy eating up the “fat” of your pantries tonight and start getting exciting about Lent, because Lent IS THE BEST!!!
Preaching tomorrow morning at my church on the Feast of the Transfiguration and grateful to my colleague @fullerseminary.bsky.social, Eve Tibbs, for her marvelous book, "Seeing the Gospel: An Interpretive Guide to Orthodox Icons," with its close study of icons of the Transfiguration.
I wrote this prayer in memory of all the years that I spent alone as a single person and in memory of all the people who feel alone in their marriages, or in their widowhood, or in any other way within the family of God.
Lord, hear our prayer on this Feast of Saint Valentine's.
The Word of the Lord according to Psalm 37 against those who boast and lie and cheat and treat the weak and vulnerable of this world with contempt and think that they will get away with it all:
Thanks!
A question to my artist and art-loving friends:
What articles or books have addressed the relation between A.I. and art making in careful fashion?
I'd like to point readers of my book on the calling of artists to folks who’ve wrestled with this question in a thoughtful way.
Any leads?
A Prayer for Courage:
“O Lord, make me brave in the face of things that terrify me and strengthen my heart to endure the testing of my trust in you, so that I might become more wholly dependent upon you in the hour of trial. I pray this in the name of the strong name of Jesus. Amen."
The pyrrhic promise of AI:
"Whatever we want! No limitations or consequences! And new help! Who doesn’t want that? Well, compared to the current kind of Googling — the kind that requires critical thinking — it certainly is new. Better? Less clear."
www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...
"The appearance of disgusting images of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama in a recent video posted on Truth Social is the latest evidence of a White House losing dignity fast." -- Albert Mohler
wng.org/opinions/our...
You'd think that politicians in the highest of offices would have learned by that now it pays to have skin as thick as a rhinoceros and a heart as soft as a dove. Instead, we have thin-skinned but cold-hearted leaders who take offense at *every* *single* *thing* rather than leading by example.
A prayer for all #SuperBowl football players and Winter #Olympics2026 athletes.💪🏻
(FYI: writing sport-related prayers is the hardest kinds to write.)