A Prayer For You Today

Dear friends,

This morning, most of us will be heading to work. It is a great privilege to serve the world this way.  It can be hard, but it need not be a burden.  Work was not part of the curse. In Adam, we shared in the world’s breaking; in Christ, we share in its remaking.

A prayer for you today.

God, our Father, the creator and sustainer of everyone and everything. Meet us here at the beginning of this day.

As it begins, we bring to you the work before us—the thoughts still unformed, the tasks half-seen, the hopes we hardly know how to name.

Go before us into every act of making. Be present in the quiet planning, in the patient revising, in the trying again, in the small obedience that shapes good work.

Keep us from the errors of pride and despair—from believing the work is ours alone, or that it does not matter at all.

Train our hands to be diligent, give our minds clarity, our hearts humility, and our imaginations life.

Let us labor with joy for those we are serving. When the path is clear, keep us grateful. When the way is hidden, keep us steady.

Guard us from comparison that harms, and from fear that sabotages our labor. Instead, work in us attentive love, honest effort, for faithful craft, and for the quiet fulfillment of our calling in this day.

May all that we offer be carried by grace. And may even the unfinished things, placed again into your hands, be gathered into your good purposes, knowing we are held by your strength.

Let the work of this day be an offering of love, and let our labor, in whatever form it takes, be a small participation in your ongoing work of bringing order, beauty, mercy, and meaning into the world, and when our work is done, give us the ability to see the good and then rest.

For Jesus ' sake, we ask all of this. Amen.

You are so dear to God. Hold this truth in your head always.

Pastor Joe