Prayer – Page 5

December 17, 2016 | Leave a Comment

A prayer for new beginnings

Shuffling through papers this morning, I found a little gem. This was my prayer for graduates at our Otero Junior College graduation in 2013:

God of grace, it is our joy to gather this morning to honor these graduates, whom You have gifted with sufficient wisdom, energy, imagination, and dedication to reach this place of achievement. They have taught us at least as much–if not more–than we could ever teach them.

Today, we honor them and celebrate with them; tomorrow they begin a new journey in their lives. Some know exactly where they are going; some are still wondering, “What’s next?” Wherever the road takes them, grant them strength to travel it, forgiveness when they stumble, perseverance to continue when they grow weary, and the joy of knowing that You walk with them at their side, always.

Thank You, God, for this glorious day, for we pray it in the name of our Savior. Amen.

November 17, 2015 | Leave a Comment

Blind

It’s a Tuesday and an unexpected day at home due to an early power outage. My schoolteacher husband is here along with my kids, so “working” from home is, well, a challenge.

I rouse my family for lunch and then declare it tidy-time, i.e. pick-up-your-dirty-socks time, and I volunteer to clean the kitchen. By the time I’m finishing, I feel some pressure to get back to “work”—Christmas is coming, after all.

“All done,” I declare to myself with satisfaction, until my daughter wanders through the room. [Read more…]

November 11, 2015 | Leave a Comment

In celebration of constancy

God’s steadfastness—His constancy—is the quality of God’s love upon which we can rest our weary heads and wake to work another day, upon which we trust in ourselves and our futures, upon which we step out confidently to fulfill the purposes God has given us.

Daniel James Brown’s book, “Boys in the Boat,” is the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 Olympic victory in rowing. They were 9 working class boys from western Washington, competing against the best, most elite teams in the East and in Great Britain, with races literally rigged to make them lose, as they rowed their hearts out under the gaze of Adolf Hitler. And they won.

The book is about the team and their sport, of course, but, more than that, it’s about one member of the team, Joe Rantz, the unlikeliest boy in the boat. Joe was poor, desperately so, and all but abandoned by his father and his new wife.

The bright spot in Joe’s life was his one true love, Joyce. She made a vow, writes Brown, “come what may, she would make sure he never went through anything like it again, would never again be abandoned, would always have a warm and loving home.”

[Read more…]

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