Prayer Pieces

I collect bits of prayer that I can use when people asked me to pray. So often we pray using such familiar words that people stop listening. Sometimes if you use a sentence from a great prayer from the past, it kind of wakes folks up. These bits and pieces are from the year 1000.

1. Jesus, we love you. You shine in our darkness.
2. Jesus, we are so glad you came to save us. The whole world is being washed with your light.
3. The light of your coming has driven the darkness from our lives.
4. In our weakness, we embrace you who became one of us because you loved us.
5. Father, we love you because you despise no one, reject no one, drive out no lonely soul, welcome everyone into your arms, and opened the doors of heaven for all of us.
6. Your love flows into our lives with quiet peacefulness.
7. You enter us to calm our troubled heart.
8. Forgive us sometimes for thinking we are the master of our lives because when we leave you even for a moment our life becomes a burden.
9. We do not want to live for ourselves but to rise into the beauty of your heavens to be wrapped in warmly in the blanket of your love.
10. Lord, destroy our darkness with your daylight.

Aren’t they beautiful! They were prayed by people 1000 years ago. I read them through each morning and when someone asked me to pray I try to use at least one of them in my prayers. When I can’t sleep at night I’ve become so used to them that they run through my head.

Here are two different translations of my favorite verse, well, maybe one of my favorite verses. It is from Psalm 27. They too have given me much comfort. They are from Psalm 27:8.

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek.

My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “LORD, I am coming.”