Category: Prayers

Posted in Devotional Life, Nature, Prayers, Thankfulness

For the Beauty of the Earth

Posted on by Elizabeth Matthews

A Prayer of Thanks

An image of sunlight filtering through trees in a woodland and landing on purple wildflowers.

This is the day the Lord has made;

I will rejoice and be glad in it.

I turn my attention toward You, God.

I listen for You.  I wait for You.

I meditate on the beauty You have brought into my life,

I recall a favorite childhood haunt, a creekbed–

boughs lilting overhead, bobbing leaves and dappled light.

The splash, the instant chill of my feet in the water.

When I was young, I went there to play.

But as I grew, I went there to meet with You.

I always knew You were there

in the muddy pools and rocks

Of the everyday and the places we play.

The places we go to get away.

You met me among toads and lizards and decaying leaves

that offer up a holy incense of life-from-death.

You were always Full Circle.

Wholeness.

You were always present in all things,

In the decomposition of the old

and the sprout of the new rising out of it–all of it beautiful. 

The blossom inseparable from the breakdown

of fallen things time-transformed into rich earth.

The wild sweet william that brightened those woods

no less splendid than pale roots entangled

with pillbugs and moss.

I find belonging among your creatures

(even though I cannot now run to those woods).

I take my place in your dynamism, 

for a rare moment, thankful to be myself–

that self who got to be alive in Your world for just a moment

and see You in rough bark and white-tailed deer.

(They huffed when they saw me, and bounded lithely over the hill.)

What can I think of heaven–

and what can I say about Eternal Life?

O Lord, my eyes are not lifed up;
My eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
(Psalm 131:1-2 ESV)

Impulse of Life, never dormant, always making and remaking, 

Resurrecting and laying to rest,

I am borne by Your profuse energy

and nurtured by the constancy of Your motions.

“Blessed is the one . . . whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither–
whatever they do prospers. (Psalm 1:1a, 2-3 NIV)

Posted in Prayers, Rest, Uncategorized

A Prayer About Rest

Posted on by Elizabeth Matthews
Our Cat, Creme Pie, in his daily demonstration of rest – Edited in Lumia Selfie

Lord, I rest in You.

I accept myself as a gift from You.

I acknowledge that I can love myself while I work on myself.

I realize improvement is not about becoming someone else, but about growing into my best self.

Thank You for reminding me to rest.

Rest means more than just doing nothing, for our bodies do a lot of vital work while we are asleep, and can’t live without it!

Rest can also mean that something abides within or is built upon another thing. To say of someone, “Their strength lies in their humility does not mean their strength simply lies there doing nothing; it is nourished by and becomes the active outflow of its source.

So, I abide in You, my Love, I sink my roots deep to draw from You, the source of my being, my breath, my uniqueness, and my passions.

I will do through You

as I rest in You.

“The Lord replied, 
‘My Presence will go with you,
and I will give you rest.'"       – Exodus 33:14
 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory,
he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being
with power through his Spirit
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,
as you are being rooted and grounded in love.       – Ephesians 3:16-17
Posted in Prayers

A Clear-Eyed Gaze

Posted on by Elizabeth Matthews

God.  Sweet Spirit.  I am here with You.  Just You.  And just me.

Help me to build my identity in these spaces when I am with You, and I know you regard me just as I am.  No judgment from people who don’t know the whole story.  No contempt and sneering born more out of someone else’s insecurity than out of my failings.  No bad advice from ‘the friends of Job,’ given more to make the giver feel important than to help the recipient gain clarity.  No comments from uninvested onlookers.

Let self-concept form in these moments when I understand that Your love doesn’t most often look like saccharine antics of affection or sweeping acts of vindication.  When I understand that Your love most often looks like . . . a steady gaze.

A gaze that never turns away but looks and keeps on looking.  A gaze that never shows surprise or contempt and never seems confused or incredulous.  A gaze that never looks right past me or right through me.  A gaze that never finds me too small to be seen.  A gaze before which I am never hidden by the crowd, nor by the circumstances, nor by the emotional baggage of the onlooker.

Your silent gaze confers dignity.  Or does it simply concur with the innate dignity that is a birthright?

(Dignity, a birthright, however contested by mobs of imps–usurpers, who have no jurisdiction to contest dignity or worth, but who parade around practicing law without a license.  They con the crowds–we con ourselves–to believe these judgments are valid.)

Before Your clear-eyed gaze . . . I am. 

I am never too perplexing to be understood.  I am never too infuriating to be countenanced; I am never too embarrassing to be looked in the eye.  I am not too far gone, but I am not particularly impressive, either.  Nevertheless, I am never such an inconvenience that this Divine parental eye cannot find the time to meet me.  When I am with the I Am, I just . . . am.

My New Year’s prayer?  Let me grow in the consciousness of this gaze.  Let me live more and more in the steadiness of Divine love.  I pray, sweet Spirit, that as I contemplate your comprehensive countenance, I will accept your acceptance and stop fighting to be seen and understood.  I pray that I will drop my defenses and that, being unafraid, I will look around me to truly see and accept those all around me, who also bear Your image and the light of Your clear-eyed gaze.