Forgive My Prayers

Abba, Father,
forgive my prayers.
Forgive all the misguided prayers I have prayed.
All the selfish prayers.
All the self-righteous prayers.
All the stupid prayers.
All the small-faith prayers.

Forgive the prayers I have "preached"
instead of truly prayed.

Forgive the times I have only
or mostly
mouthed the words.

Forgive the countless times
I have prayed only what was on my heart,
not even bothering to seek what was on your heart.

Forgive the weak prayers.
The manipulative prayers.
The faithless prayers.
The feckless prayers.
The fraudulent prayers.

Forgive, Lord,
and thank you more than I can say
that you still listen...
after all that.
Amen.

Holy Spirit, Living Breath of God

The Door of My Heart and Life

O God, make the door [of my heart and life]
wide enough to receive
all who need human love and fellowship;
narrow enough to shut out
all envy, pride, and strife.
Amen.

(a prayer from St. Stephen's Walbrook in London)

A Prayer for Incarnation

Help me, O God,

To live the recipe
before I give the recipe.
Give me the kneading strength
to work the words into the doughy recesses of my life.
Help me to leave it alone a while
so it can rise.
Help me not to fear the oven
so it can bake.
And grant that in the baking
the world would be able to roll down its window
and savor the aroma of freshly baked bread...

(A prayer by Ken Gire from his book, Windows of the Soul, p. 59)

Autumn Praise

I praise you, Lord, for Autumn:
for falling temperatures and morning chill,
trees turned gold and red, brown and orange,
falling leaves and blowing leaves,
the smell of burning leaves,
the joy of leaf-pile jumping.

I praise you, Lord, for Autumn:
the interplay of outside temperatures
and inside warmth,
the promise of cider and pumpkin bread,
the blessing of blankets and sweaters.

I praise you, Lord, for Autumn:
what Archibald Macleish called
"the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall
Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise."*

I praise you, Lord, for Autumn:
the beauty and hope in the change of season,
the promise that the coming of Autumn
heralds another ending,
a new beginning,
and the wonder of another Winter,
another Spring,
another Summer,
yet to come.

(*Archibald MacLeish, “Immortal Autumn” from Collected Poems 1917-1982. Copyright © 1985 by The Estate of Archibald MacLeish)

I Give Myself Away

For Humility

Help me, O God,

To have the humility to sit at the feet of great art,
whether it is a painting or a person on the street,
a scene from a movie or a score from a musical,
a sunset or a psalm,
and to look and to listen and to receive
what is being offered me there.

Give me the grace to submit to its scrutiny,
seeking not to do something to it,
but that it might do something to me;
seeking not in some way to judge it,
but that it might in some way judge me...

(A prayer by Ken Gire from his book, Windows of the Soul, p. 94; the art is "In the Beginning," by internationally-renowned artist Makoto Fujimura)

A Kyrie Eleison for a Sick World

For the people of Nairobi, Kenya, I pray,
Lord, have mercy.

For the Christians of Peshawar, Pakistan, I pray,
Lord, have mercy.

For Guangdong Province and the city of Shanwei, I pray,
Lord, have mercy.

For the bereaved of the Navy Yard shooting, I pray,
Lord, have mercy.

For the victims of violence in Afghanistan and Iraq, I pray,
Lord, have mercy.

For the people of Egypt--especially the Coptic community, I pray,
Lord, have mercy.

For the victims of flooding in Colorado, I pray,
Lord, have mercy.

For all who suffer in this sick world, I pray,
Lord, have mercy.

Workday Prayer

Fronting my task, these things I ask:

To be true, this whole day through;

To be content with honest work,

Fearing only lest I shirk;

To see, and know, and do what's right;

To come, unsullied, home at night.

(from Abundant Living, by E. Stanley Jones, p. 245)

Autumn Day

Lord, it is time. The summer was so great.
Impose upon the sundials now your shadows
and round the meadows let the winds rotate.
Command the last fruits to incarnadine;
vouchsafe, to urge them on into completeness,
yet two more south-like days; and that last sweetness,
inveigle it into the heavy vine.

(excerpt from "Autumn Day," by Rainer Maria Rilke; from The Book of Images)

Before I Speak

O Lord,
I place myself in Your hands.
I will be tempted,
on this day in which I am blessed to speak to others,
to do so in my own strength,
as though I have any word to say,
and wisdom to offer,
anything of my own.

Forgive me now, Lord,
and forgive me then,
and turn me quickly
to remember you and rely on you,
my only Source,
my only Word,
my only wisdom,
my all,
in Jesus' name, amen.

On This Day of Travel

Gracious Lord,
be with me as I travel today.
Make smooth paths for me.
Grant safe and timely travel
to the airport,
between airports,
and between gates.
Help me to make my flights
and safely reach my destination.
Guide my steps,
guard my thoughts,
and give me sweet communion with you
and pleasant interactions with others
everywhere I go,
in Jesus' name, amen.

Blessed Indeed

Lord God,
thank you
that neither my children
nor my grandchildren
have yet known
the horrors of war,
the deprivation of poverty,
or the ache of true hunger,
in Jesus' name,
amen.

A Prayer for Grace

Thank You, God,

For those moments in my life
when You opened a window
and offered a word
that nourished the hunger in my soul.

Give me the grace to realize that these are the words I live by,
not by bread alone,
whatever form that bread may take,
however satisfying it may seem at the time.

Give me the grace to live not just reflectively but receptively,
that I may not only notice when a window is opened
but also receive what is offered,
understanding that what is offered
is my soul's daily bread...

(A prayer by Ken Gire from his book, Windows of the Soul, p. 59)

For Colorado and New Mexico

Father, we pray for those affected by the flooding in Colorado and New Mexico. Comfort those who have lost loved ones, heal those who are injured, and provide for those who have lost homes and possessions. Please bring the rain to an end, that the land may dry out and the clean up begin. Amen.

(borrowed from the Daily Prayer website)

When I Behold the Problems of Our World

When I behold the problems of our world,
O Lord,
I pray not to be tempted to quick answers.

When every tongue declares a different Truth,
when every people praises its own righteousness,
let me pause before I speak or praise or hope.

Let me look inward
seeking to discover eternal truths
implanted there by Thee,
truths greater than those heard
in the outer multitude of voices and words.

And let me remember always that to be loud is not to be right,
to be strange is not to be forbidden,
to be new is not to be frightful,
to be black is not to be ugly.

Thus let me find truths true to Thee,
that I may live with them,
and Thee,
and myself,
in peace.

(a prayerfrom the 8th century Gelasian Sacramentary, the second oldest extant liturgical book in the West, by way of Leonard Sweet's Facebook page)

Lord, I Run to You

To Be a Pure Channel of Thy Grace

My Master God,
I am desired to preach today,
but go weak and needy to my task;
Yet I long that people
might be edified with divine truth,
that an honest testimony
might be borne for thee;
Give me assistance in preaching and prayer,
with heart uplifted for grace and unction.
Present to my view
things pertaining to my subject,
with fullness of matter and clarity of thought,
proper expressions, fluency, fervency,
a feeling sense of the things I preach,
and grace to apply them to men’s consciences.
Keep me conscious all the while of my defects,
and let me not gloat in pride
over my performance.
Help me to offer a testimony for thyself,
and to leave sinners inexcusable
in neglecting thy mercy.
Give me freedom to open the sorrows of thy people,
and set before them comforting considerations.
Attend with power the truth preached.
and awaken the attention of my slothful audience.
May thy people be refreshed, melted, convicted, comforted,
and help me to use the strongest arguments
drawn from Christ’s incarnation and sufferings,
that men might be made holy.

I myself need thy support, comfort, strength, holiness,
that I might be a pure channel of thy grace,
and be able to do something for thee;
Give me then refreshment among thy people,
and help me not to treat excellent matter in a defective way,
or bear a broken testimony to so worthy a redeemer,
or be harsh in treating of Christ’s death, its design and end,
from lack of warmth and fervency.
And keep me in tune with thee as I do this work.

(from The Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers, edited by Arthur Bennett; photo is of the pulpit in Worms Cathedral, Worms, Germany)

Prayer From an Upcoming Book

Help me to acknowledge
what is real in me
and submit it to
the ultimate, infinite reality that is in you.

(excerpted from a prayer
in the upcoming book,
Life Stinks...and Then You Die (Living Well in a Sick World), p. 35)

A Prayer on Yom Kippur

On this day our Christian thoughts are turned
to Jewish possibilities of forgiveness and reconciliation.
On this day we stand with them in covenant,
before you,
before your Torah,
amid a world torn asunder.

Our thoughts are of death and destruction,
of fragility and life under threat.
We ponder cities mired in mud and
mountains wrecked in quake;
we notice melting ice and rising water;
we name places of violence
far away and close to home.

We tremble in our insecurity,
afraid to be victim,
but now and then noticing that we are perpetrators;
we finance and applaud faraway violence,
usually not naming the torn bodies or
raped mothers or forgotten children.
We feel uneasy but not frontally guilty,
not until we face your thoughts
that are remote from our thoughts;
we imagine that you think in grief and disappointment
over the mess we have made;
we imagine that you shudder in dismay and anger
over the violation of your good dream;
we imagine that you are ready to abandon us.

But we also imagine that your thoughts are interrupted
by your own poets and prophets,
who line out newness...
new exodus,
new covenant,
new forgiveness,
new life.

While we watch in our dis-ease,
we hear Easter news again,
and your resolve of new beginning.

And so we begin to move
from sadness to joy,
from hurt to dance,
from enslavement to freedom.

And then we wait again for your wonder to become visible
in the world of empires and colonies,
of mudslides and torrents.

We wait. Come fully, come soon.


(a prayer by Walter Brueggemann, from his book, Prayers for a Privileged People)