Prayer for Your Weekend

 

A Prayer for Your Weekend by Ted Loder (Guerrillas for Grace)

Oh God, gather me now to be with you as you are with me.

Soothe my tiredness;

quiet my fretfulness;

curb my aimlessness;

relieve my compulsiveness;

let me be easy for a moment.

O Lord, release me

from the fears and guilts which grip me so tightly;

from the expectations and opinions which I so tightly grip,

that I may be open

to receiving what you give,

to risking something genuinely new,

to learning something refreshingly different.

Forgive me

for claiming so much for myself

that I leave no room for gratitude;

for confusing exercises in self-importance

with acceptance of self-worth;

for complaining so much of my burdens

that I become a burden;

for competing against others so insidiously

that I stifle celebrating them

and receiving your blessing through their gifts.

O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me.

Amen.

It is that time of year when the refrain “all is safely gathered in” becomes all important. It is not easy to gather or to be gathered. Ted Loder’s prayer surrenders my anxiety to the ultimate embrace and safety in God’s gathering. This is the blessing which resounds long after burdens have been laid down. This is the blessing of gratitude which floats up through the scattered crops and scattered emotions. “let me be easy for a moment”; let us be easy for a moment together.