Practicing the Presence of God

Lord, I haven't a clue what you've got in store for me today. But it's going to be exciting placing myself at your disposal to see you accomplish through me your eternal ends.

Amen.

Meet me, O Christ, in this stillness of morning. Move me, O Spirit, to quiet my heart. Mend me, O Father, from yesterday's harms.

From the discords of yesterday, resurrect my peace. From the discouragements of yesterday, resurrect my hope. From the weariness of yesterday, resurrect my strength. From the doubts of yesterday, resurrect my faith. From the wounds of yesterday, resurrect my love.

Let me enter this new day, aware of my need, and awake to your grace, O Lord.

Amen.

O Christ who supplies my every need, I praise you for all provisions and for the means by which they are provided. For my current employment, in this season of life, I give you thanks. By it, may I meet my own needs, and contribute to the needs of others.

Let me work and serve in this position with mindfulness, creativity, and kindness, loving you well by loving all whom I encounter here.

Jesus, be everpresent as mediator between me and my employer, between me and my supervisors and co-workers, and in all my dealings with others in this work, reminding me that my treatment of them is the strongest evidence of my affection for you.

Grant me therefore the patience to listen to others, the humility to learn from them, the compassion to consider their needs as my own, and the grace to wear well in this place the name of my Lord, remembering that I arrive here each day as an emissary of your kingdom.

Let me be an asset to my employer and superiors, working for their fourishing without resentment. Let me be a support to my peers, contributing to their advancement without jealousy. Let me be an encouragement to any I train or lead, affirming and equipping them without disdain.

May the days of my employment here be meaningful. Use this chapter in my life to accomplish your ends, whatever they might be.

May my presence here daily suggest your presence here. And may the outworking of the gospel be always evident in this my work, that my service as an employee might be ever reckoned and received as service first rendered unto you, O Christ.

Amen.

May I learn to love learning, O Lord, for the world is yours, and all things in it speak -each in their way-of you: of your mind, your designs, your artistry, your power, your unfolding purpose.

All knowledge is your knowledge. All wisdom your wisdom.

Therefore, as I apply myself to learning, may I be mindful that all created things are your creative expression, that all stories are held within your greater story, and that all disciplines of order and design are a chasing after your thoughts- so that greater mastery of these subjects will yield ever greater knowledge of the symmetry and wonder of your ways.

Along this journey, O Great Architect of Life and Beauty, bless me with teachers who are passionate about the subjects they teach, and with mentors who will take joy in awakening in me a fierce love for those parts of your creation and your story that they have already learned to love well.

As I apply myself even to those subjects that I might at first find tedious, reward my efforts with new insights, fresh inspiration, small epiphanies, and with the firm conviction that you are at work in my heart in all circumstances, not only broadening my knowledge, but also shaping my heart by patience, endurance, and discipline that I might mature to more fitly and humbly serve the purposes of your great kingdom.

Give me a deepening knowledge of truth and a finer discernment of the ideas I encounter in my studies. Guard my mind always against error, and guard also my heart against the temptation to compare my own performance to the work of my peers, and so to fall into either of the twin traps of shame or pride.

Grant instead that I might happily steward what scholarly gifts you have apportioned me, and that I might do so as means of preparing myself for service to you and to others, my identity drawn from your love and forgiveness, and not from my grades or accolades here.

Open, O Lord, as you will, the paths of my life in the days yet to come. Use my studies to further shape my vision of what my place and call in this world might be. Begin to show me where my own deep gladness and the world's deep need might meet. And in that light, let me be mindful not only of my studies, but also mindful of the needs of my peers and even of my teachers.

Let me respond with mercy to the failings of others. Let me be in this school, even in small ways, a bearer of love and light and reconciliation; which is to say, let me in humility be your child.

God grant this child discernment and wisdom. Guard me from error. God grant this child knowledge and understanding. Lead me to truth. God bless the labors of this new season. Shape me for your service.

Amen.

O Discerning Spirit, who alone judges all things rightly, now be present in my mind and active in my imagination as I prepare to engage with the claims and questions of diverse cultures incarnated in the stories that people tell.

Let me experience mediums of art and expression, neither as a passive consumer nor as an entertainment glutton, but rather as one who through such works would more fully and compassionately enter this ongoing, human conversation of mystery and meaning, wonder and beauty, good and evil, sorrow and joy, fear and love.

All truth is your truth, O Lord, and all beauty is your beauty. Therefore use human expressions of celebration and longing as catalysts to draw my mind toward ever deeper insight, my imagination into new and wondering awe, and my heartbeat into closer rhythm with your own.

Shape my vision by your fixed precepts, and tutor me, Holy Spirit, that I might learn to discern the difference between those stories that are whole, echoing the greater narrative of your redemption, and those that are bent or broken, failing to trace accurately the patterns of your eternal thoughts and so failing to name rightly the true condition of humanity and of all creation.

Grant me wisdom to divide rightly, to separate form from content, craft from narrative, and meaning from emotion.

Bless me with the great discernment to be able to celebrate the stamp of your divine image revealed in an excellence of craft and artistry even while grieving a paucity of meaning or hope in the same work.

Guard my mind against the old enticement to believe a lie simply because it is beautifully told. Let me not be careless. Give me right conviction to judge my own motives in that which I approve, teaching me to be always mindful of that which I consume, and thoughtful of the ways in which I consume it. Impart to me keener knowledge of the limits of my own heart in light of my own particular brokenness, that I might choose what would be for my flourishing and not for my harm.

And give me the grace to understand that what causes me to stumble might bear no ill consequence for another of your children, so that while I am to care for my brothers and sisters, I must also allow them, in matters of conscience, the freedom to sometimes choose a thing your Spirit convicts me to refrain from. Even so, let my own freedoms in Christ never be faunted or exercised in such a way as to give cause for confusion, temptation, or stumbling in others.

May the stories I partake of, and the ways in which I engage with them, make me in the end a more empathetic Christ-bearer, more compassionate, more aware of my own brokenness and need for grace, better able to understand the hopes and fears and failings of my fellow humans, so that I might more authentically live and learn and love among them unto the end that all of our many stories might be more beautifully woven into your own greater story.

Amen.

May I recall in this needful parable of soil and rags, of soap and water and cleansing, the work which you have done for your people, O Christ, and the work which you are now doing, in me. Even as the waters are agitated and churned, stir by your Holy Spirit my heart and memory and conscience.

Open my eyes to see my own faults, my own weaknesses, the harms I have caused and the griefs I have inflicted- Not so that I would sit in an impassable guilt, but so that I would be stirred to fresh repentance, to the making of amends where amends can be made, and to prayer and trust that your Spirit might cleanse those things which I have stained by my own selfishness, bitterness, jealousy, pride, or impatience.

Even as I draw the freshly laundered clothes from the basin, may the sight and the scent of a new cleanness remind me of the righteousness that is now mine, of the ongoing forgiveness that you extend, of your work on my behalf which is both finished, and forever ongoing and necessary in this life.

In Christ you have declared me righteous. Yet by your Spirit I pray You would ever continue to cleanse me, sanctifying me that my aroma, day to day and week to week, might be more and more like that of Christ.

Lord, I praise you for divine beauty reflected in the form of this person. Now train my heart so that my response to their beauty would not be twisted downward into envy or desire, but would instead be directed upward in worship of you, their Creator-as was your intention for all such beauty before the breaking of the world.

For the infinite variety of your creative expression, I praise you, O God. You have made even the necessary act of eating a nurturing comfort and a perpetual delight.

I praise you, O God, for these inexplicable gifts of mirth and merriment and laughter, delighting in such foretaste of the wellsprings of eternal joy that ever bubble and flow within your glad Trinity.

God, as I hold a moment in my thoughts, I ask that you would hold them eternally in yours, remaining ever at work in their heart and life, even now directing their paths toward your good ends.

Tune my heart, my mind, my life, to voice your melodies, O God.

Thank you, O Lord, for gifts of water and warmth, and for the cleansing and comfort you offer both body and soul.

The wail of sirens is the anthem of our brokenness, reminding us that fear and tragedy, pain and crime yet plague a creation groaning for its redemption.

Therefore attend those now in crisis, O Lord, remaining ever merciful and mindful of their frailties. May their first cry be to you, and may such cries be met by your presence and your peace.

Grant good judgment to those who minister aid and protection, and comfort all who endure trauma or loss. Use even these parts of our stories which are accompanied by sirens, O Lord, to press us closer to your heart.

Amen.

I bring to you Lord, my momentary irritation, that you might reveal the buried seed of it--not in the words or actions of another person, but in the withered and hypocritical expectations of my own small heart. Uproot from this impoverished soil all arrogance and insecurity that would prompt me to dismiss or disdain others, judging them with a less generous measure than I reckon when judging myself.

Prune away the tangled growth of my own unjustified irritations, Jesus, and graft to my heart instead your humility, your compassion, your patience, your kindness, that I might bear good fruit in keeping with your grace.

Amen.

Let me not react in this moment, O Lord, in the blindness of my own emotion.

Rather give me wisdom to respond with a grace that would shepherd my child's heart toward your mercies, so equipping them for the hard labors of their own pilgrimage.

Amen.

If my heart were more content in you, O Lord, I would be less inclined to rage at others. Let me gauge by the knot in my gut, the poverty of my own understanding of the grace that I have received from a God who, loving me, chose rather to receive wounds than to give them.

Take from me my self-righteousness, and my ego-driven demands for respect. Overthrow the tyranny of my anger, O Lord, and in its place establish a better vision of your throne, your kingdom, and your peace.

Amen.