On Ash Wednesday we are invited by the Church “to the observance of a holy Lent.” One of the tools we are encouraged to use is prayer. As we enter the last days of Lent and move towards Holy Week, Easter, and Eastertide, I thought I would share with you some of the prayers I have found helpful over these weeks with the goal to keep up the practice of prayer into the rest of the year. So here goes.

Time to Pray

Jesus, I can’t expect to know you if I seldom speak
to you. Help me to find the time and place
to pray every day. Amen. 1  

A Difficult Decision

God I don’t know what to do.
It will make a great difference.
I have gathered all the information I need.
I have weighed those things for and against.
I have asked the advice of experts and friends,
And I still don’t know what to do.
Help me God to choose wisely.
And once I have chosen,
Help me to go forward in faith. Amen. 2

Come Holy Spirit, show me my sin. Amen.

(Pray this daily and gradually, gently
the Spirit will show you your sin.)

 In dealing with a difficult situation or person

Bless (the person of situation), Change me. Amen.

 Prayer for a Busy Day

Dear God,
When the day is too busy and the voices too loud,
When there is too much on my mind and
too little in my heart,
When I plan too much for tomorrow
and explain too much about yesterday,
When faith is a Sunday word and
“Let’s be practical” my motto through the week,
when I have hidden my true feelings inside and
then complained of being lonely and misunderstood,
when I am quite hopelessly lost
and don’t even have sense to know it-
Be my good shepherd and my friend.
Gather up my jangled nerves, my tense muscles,
My anxious and fluttering heart.
Gather up my fearful heart and hold it
warmly in your hand.
Send life pulsing through it like an irresistible flood.
Quicken me to quivering blaze, excited and alive.
But show me how to be quiet, too.
Teach me to be still.
In deep stillness let me rest.
Let silence surround me like a friend,
Calming me and instructing me
with deeper wisdom from within.
When my day is too busy and the voices too loud,
Be my good shepherd and my friend. Amen. 3

And in closing, a prayer I use frequently during pastoral visits. I find it both challenging and soothing. It is found on page 461 in the Book of Common Prayer.

This is another day, O Lord.
I know not what it will bring forth,
But make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be.
If I am to stand up,
Help me to stand bravely.
If I am to sit still,
Help me to sit quietly.
If I am to lie low,
Help me to do it patiently.
And if I am to do nothing,
Let me do it gallantly.
Make these words more than words,
And give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.

I do indeed pray that you are observing a “Holy Lent” that will carry you into the blessings of Easter.

1 Brooke, Avery. Plain Prayers in a Complicated World. Cowley Publications: 1993.

2 Ibid.

3 Rev. George L. Miller