Good and gracious God, thank you for awakening me to a new day. Thank you for the sights, smells, sounds, and feels that enliven me in mind, body, and spirit to what today has in store. I know that there is news, that as I slept the someones and somewheres of the vast, interconnected world remained in motion. I realize that things have happened, and that there is no lack of stuff to do. But as the psalmist writes of you being slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, I pray that you would slow my eagerness to consume that news and allow instead for the empty cup of my life at this day’s dawn to overflow with assurances of your grace, of your guiding presence within and alongside me, steady and sure. Turn my anxious ear toward Jesus saying, “Do not worry about your life,” so that my whole self would turn toward your provision of daily bread, of all that is needed for the path laid out before me and the precious hours I have to walk it.
O Holy One, I recognize that I am finite, that for every one thing I can control there are countless billions beyond my reach, let alone my sway. Admitting my finitude grants me liberation to lean fully into the blessings and challenges toward which I am called today, and my soul takes comfort in your interceding reach beyond the necessary limitations of my humanity. I appreciate how limits are vital so that as your favor rests in me, my exhausted soul can take rest in the shelter of your wing, my Mother Hen, my Shepherd, my God.
So today I pray that you would be in the war-torn places, the violence-stricken places, the bombed, battered, and bruised places in need of tender mercies, healing, and hope. I pray that you would be in the lonely, timid, overlooked places crying out to be noticed, understood, and appreciated. I pray that you would be in the self-indulged places, the hyper-individualized places teeming with unchecked arrogance that they would not explode onto everything and everyone around them with the contagions of alarmist scapegoating, unfounded blame, and needless hostility. I pray that you would rein in that scattered landscape intended by your creating hand for goodness and mercy, compassion and justice, so that every beloved shard broken away from your heart’s expectant desires would be reconciled, redeemed, and reborn, delivered into the kin-dom Jesus proclaims to be upon us right now, this very day.
This is my prayer. I open my hands giving it to you as an offering knowing that you will take it and replace it with all that I need to live and love and finally rest again at the end of this day while the earth keeps spinning. Amen.