Years
ago, a cousin of mine gave me a booklet by Ben Campbell Johnson, in which
I found this prayer.
Begin where you are. Give what you've got. Step out in faith. Expect God to act in your life.I've said it every morning since. It somehow sums up in four short sentences what I must be about and what I must do, and Whom I can count on!
My "Work-Weary Soul" needs a daily infusion of God's grace and patience and forgiveness and love and push. I can say my prayers, but I must learn to live in and through their words, otherwise, I'm just giving what my father used to call "lip service." I need to walk and talk and listen every day. I need to act in my prayers as if Jesus was actually standing or sitting or walking next to me. I may not be able to see Him, but He's there; His presence is real. He is closer than I dare imagine. I need to put my hand in His. I am in the presence of the living Lord or else my "prayers" are just empty words.
Daily Disciplines
I start with the Bible because that is my daily road map and I read the psalms and the lessons appointed for the day. Some days it's all very clear, other days it's pretty cloudy, but almost always through those ancient words will come a word or a statement or an event which opens to me a way, a road, an idea, a plan of action I can try to follow. But even if it's just the nub of a new thought, that's a beginning and that's all God expects of me. Then I take that idea or thought and try to incorporate it into my plan for the day.
Next I "pray" the newspaper for there in contemporary form is the condition of the world I inhabit and into which I am sent as a disciple every single day. More often than not something I've read in the Bible speaks to something I've read in the newspaper, which brings it and me alive. Now I can pray more fully and more realistically and more rationally and with a real sense of spiritual direction for the day which lies ahead.
Now I say/read/think/feel/embrace my daily prayers. In recent years I have written my own for I find this forces me to be more real and open with God. I start with this simple cry for HELP.
Hear my cries, O God, and help me "be still and know that Thou art God."I pray for myself first because as someone reminded me some years back – you cannot pray or give to another what you do not have yourself. Unless I can admit my need for God's healing and help in my own convoluted and complicated life, how can I possibly pray for you with any integrity or passion?
Ease my fears, my worries, my pain, as I put myself in Your protecting hands.
'Let go and let God' is my daily prayer. You are in charge. You are in control.
Please calm and collect and center me as life's events unfold before me, whether they be of my choosing or not.
I then pray for those I know and love the most, by name, and then ask God to open my heart and my hands and my mind to all who cross my path this new day.
Lord Jesus, I literally stake my life on You. Please hang in and hang tough with me and those for whom I pray. We need Your help. We need Your grace. We need Your forgiveness. We need Your healing. We need Your humor. We need Your peace.Thanksgiving and Forgiveness come next. I have so much to be grateful for; Jesus; my life, my love, my liberty; a new day and a new chance; the list goes on. So I need to say thank you to Him who gives me life and hope and help and healing. But I also need to ask His forgiveness for all those stupid and harmful things I've done to myself and others. The hard part is not in asking for forgiveness, but having to recite to myself my awful and inexcusable sins. And it's only through that self cleansing that I can truly know and feel His forgiving love.
Here's a prayer that I think is a daily must.
Lord, help me to see You in all those people I cannot stand I need to see their 'faults' as a reflection of my own. I pray for them as vulnerable, needy, and often lonely people. Help me to see You in them. Help me to see them in me.I pray for those "in charge" the world over. I pray for those who are in particular need of God's healing and I pray for them, by name, by need, and as they might be – not as they are at the present time. I write their names down so I won't forget them, but also so I can focus on each one as I pray for God's healing help for them individually. I close these prayers by saying
Into Your hands I commit them. In my prayers and in my life I will try to keep them.A telephone call, a visit, a letter, an errand run are just some of the ways we can pray, in act as well as word! We need to pray "with" and not just "for."
I write and use other prayers to get me up and get me going, but there is one my wife and I say together every day that sort of sums up my dependence on and belief in the power of prayer. And it does help our "Work-Weary souls" to cope and commit ourselves into His most loving and healing hands. It's my last prayer before the Lord's Prayer.
Dear Lord, we are frail and finite creatures whose years are numbered, yet we live on with a bit of abandon and lots of hope. Then something comes our way which unbalances our systems, disrupts our patterns and our lives and we become frightened, confused, and angry. But it's Your presence, Your healing power, Your peace, which makes it possible for us to work through and cope with whatever does come our way or becomes our lot. Then we can offer up our pain in prayer for someone else who's hurting more, and we can use our fear as a reminder that we really have nothing to fear. So please dear Lord, during these uncertain and confusing times, shine on us and in us and through us. We know that You are at our side and on our side and that literally nothing, however bad it might seem at the moment, can ever separate us from You or from those we love! Amen.Alan Houghton is a retired Episcopal minister, former businessman, author and community activist living in Pawleys Island SC.
Other Prayers and writings by Alan Houghton...