Tag Archives: prayers

Noble guest of heart and mind.

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HOLY SPIRIT, COME WITH LIGHT

Holy Spirit, come with light,
Break the dark and gloomy night
With Thy day unending.
Help us with a joyful lay
Greet the Lord’s triumphant day
Now with might ascending.

Comforter so wondrous kind,
Noble guest of heart and mind
Fix in us Thy dwelling.
Give us peace in storm and strife,
Fill each troubled heart and life
With Thy joy excelling.

Make salvation clear to us,
Who despite our sin and dross
Would exalt the Spirit.
For without Thine aid and love
All our life and work must prove
Vain and without merit.

Raise or bow us with Thine arm,
Break temptation’s evil charm,
Clear our clouded vision.
Fill our hearts with longing new,
Cleanse us with Thy morning dew,
Tears of deep contrition.

Blessed Fount of life and breath,
Let our hope in view of death
Blossom bright and vernal;
And above the silent tomb
Let the Easter lilies bloom,
Signs of life eternal.

-N. F. S. Grundtvig
1783-1872, Denmark

The heat and the oxygen.

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“I ask this much” was the title of a post I wrote ten years ago, not long after my husband died. My thoughts then were inspired by the poem below, which I recently revisited. Yesterday I began to notice afresh the near constancy of my murmuring and complaining; today I was encouraged by the testimony of my former self, who wrote back then,

And every day, I feel a great Love surrounding me, like the pleasant air that holds me and gives me oxygen even while I am having those pity parties. Or like the sun whose heat is keeping me alive and giving me energy.

Let us be up and doing! And let’s start by asking the great Maker of the sun and of us, for His light, and strength, and joy. Our asking will be the beginning of the receiving.

PRAYER at SUNRISE

O mighty, powerful, dark-dispelling sun,
Now thou art risen, and thy day begun.
How shrink the shrouding mists before thy face,
As up thou spring’st to thy diurnal race!
How darkness chases darkness to the west,
As shades of light on light rise radiant from thy crest!
For thee, great source of strength, emblem of might,
In hours of darkest gloom there is no night.
Thou shinest on though clouds hide thee from sight,
And through each break thou sendest down thy light.

O greater Maker of this Thy great sun,
Give me the strength this one day’s race to run,
Fill me with light, fill me with sun-like strength,
Fill me with joy to rob the day its length.
Light from within, light that will outward shine,
Strength to make strong some weaker heart than mine,
Joy to make glad each soul that feels its touch;
Great Father of the sun, I ask this much.

–James Weldon Johnson 1871-1938

Prayer for Deliverance from Fire

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I myself live in northern California, far from the fires that are devastating large areas in the southern part of our state. The situation doesn’t affect me directly, but I do have friends and family who are suffering and still endangered, as many of you probably do, too — not to mention all the thousands of people whom we don’t know who are literally embroiled in this disaster. So I appreciate this prayer that just came to me through email, and which may give relief to your hearts’ groanings as well. I transcribed the text below the image.

O Lord our God, keep our cities and every city and land from the ravages of fire and ruinous wind. Strengthen our firefighters and emergency workers who labor heroically to preserve life, limb and dwellings from destruction. Protect from harm those who are in danger. Draw near, Heavenly Father, and comfort those who have suffered terrible loss and devastation. Uphold the grieving and provide for the evacuated, displaced, and bereaved. Calm the winds and send us gentle rains to quench the conflagrations.

Visit us all with repentance, and renew our faith. Hear our cry, O God our Savior, the Hope of all the ends of the earth and of those who are in the midst of calamity, and be gracious, be gracious, O Master, upon our sins, and have mercy on us. For Thou art a merciful God and lovest mankind, and unto Thee we ascribe glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

When winter is over.

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Last week it seemed that winter had just begun, but this evening a balmy wind blew in from I can’t imagine where, and made me think ahead to when actual winter will be over and gone. I offer this poem that makes reference to that point in the future, metaphorically:

A SHORT TESTAMENT

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death’s bare branches.

–Anne Porter