Day of Prayer

Lord God,

I praise you for this morning’s grapefruit.  You taught the grapefruit how to grow into sections, seeds, juice, and skin.  It was delicious.  Thank you. I ask your blessing on the growers, harvesters and transporters of the grapefruit.  May they have equitable wages, healthy profits, and fair working conditions.

God, I offer you my deep gratitude for my family and friends.  Thank you for my husband, who is a good man, full of integrity, willingness to help others (including me), and most always makes me laugh.  Thank you for his uncanny ability to fill in the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, after I have put in the three answers I know.  

Thank you for my children, who are so precious to me that I have no words to express it.  I am so grateful that they get along with each other, a blessing beyond measure.  Every day they bring me joy and laughter.  Thank you for their uncanny ability to test my parenting skills.  

For my parents, my aunts, my uncle, my brothers and their families, my in-laws and their families, I ask your blessing.  They all have tough rows to hoe. I pray that their physical and mental pain can be replaced with full health.  Thank you for their uncanny ability to be there in support of our family, in spite of the difficulties they all face.

I ask your blessing, O Lord, on my friends far and near.  Each friend is unique and wonderful.  I have a rich life because of them all.  Thank you for their uncanny ability to accept me and befriend me and make funny comments on facebook.

I also pray today for the lonely, hurting, angry, and hungry people in the world.  Please comfort them and satisfy their need, and more than that I pray that I may somehow, for even just one of them, bring your peace.

On this day, O Lord, I pray that you will make it possible for my son to mow the lawn.  Because otherwise, I will have to do it.  Have mercy, O Lord.

God, lend your guidance to our nation’s leaders at every level of government.  Bless them with your wisdom.  I implore you to lead all Americans to put aside bitter complaints and accusations against those with whom we have political disagreements.  Instead, let us learn to speak with reason and compassion, so that we can listen to each other and learn how best to solve our nation’s problems.  And may those solutions be constitutional.

I thank you that there is an aerobics class for middle-aged dumpy women, and that I was able to go this morning, and that I didn’t fall down.  I pray that someday I will be able to comply when the aerobics instructor says, “Pull in your abs.”

I praise you that I have a job.  And now, O Lord, I had better get to work at my job.  But still praying....