A Prayer 

Lord, I spend a lot of time talking to you about myself, I have so many needs. 

Help me today to think of others.

I pray for people weighed down by worry. Anxious people, who don’t know where to turn. Who don’t know whose door to knock on, bewildered by what life has brought. Knocked off balance by the suffering and inequality they meet at every step. People without choices, whose only way is down.

Somehow, Lord, in the turmoil of survival. In the questioning and the doubt, show yourself to them. Let them find you, not in the abstract, not in the smooth words of the practised preacher, but in a hand held out to help. In shared tears, and in the silence that says everything, without words. May they recognise your purposes for them, and learn that your will for them is good.

Help us, each one of us, to face things as they are. 

And although the world has forgotten the architect’s plans, though the builders ignore the blueprint, and the foundations shake with every pressure, shelter us with your presence. 

Help us to see you at work not only in the good days but in the bad, and to know, beyond doubt, not through other’s words but our own experience. That you work together with us.

For good.

Then, Lord,

Our praise will be real,

Our joy deep.

Eddie Askew