Prayer XXXIV

O Lord, our gracious Father, Who hast revealed Thy love to us, help us to answer it with our love to Thee. And since Thou hast taught us to call Thee our Father, may we, in the consciousness of Thy love and fatherhood, be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love.

We thank Thee, O Father, for all which Thou dost give to Thy servants to help them to grow like Thee. We pray that we may rightly use and faithfully employ all these great gifts of Thine, so that day by day we may be tending nearer to being perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Thou knowest our weakness; we beseech Thee for the large hope and the great aim and possibility which such commandments, being promises as well as commandments, set before the feeblest of us. We ask Thee, Lord, that we may rise to the height of the possibilities which Thou dost open to us, and may increasingly and daily be approaching Thyself, and receiving into ourselves more and more of the likeness of the heavenly. Help us to put off all ancient evil, and to put on that new nature after the image of Him that created us. And grant, we beseech Thee, to each of us so to use circumstances, callings, duties, as that these may all tend, in some measure, to our bearing the image of Jesus Christ our Lord in Whom is Thine image.

O Lord, whatever may be the thoughts that have been busy in our minds ere we entered into Thy house, and however unworthy we may be to handle such holy things as we here come into contact with, do Thou graciously help each of us that we may get some strength for daily work, some insight into Thy truth, some clear knowledge of ourselves, some happy confidence in Thee, by our gathering together thus. And may our profiting appear unto all men, and our daily lives bear witness for us concerning the motives by which, and the Example after which, we seek to regulate our lives.

Help us in all our common work, O Lord; to carry into it the spirit of Thy children, and do the least thing from the greatest principles, and bring all the force and the glory of Thy truth to bear on all the trifles of our daily commonplace routine. Be with any of us that may have more than the ordinary course of familiar life to face to-day, whether it be in regard of greater duties than ordinary, or with deeper anxieties and more gnawing sorrows than, thank God! fall to the lot of most of us in most of our lives. Whatever be our burdens, do Thou help us to bear them, and help us to cast them upon Thee to bear them. And grant, we beseech Thee, that disciplined by sorrow and by joy, and taught by all the changes of life, we may in them all hear the great voice which says to us, ‘Come up hither, and dwell in the unchanging realm of love and purity with God.’

We beseech Thee to comfort them that need consolation, to direct such as are in want of guidance, to clear the paths of those whose ways may be encumbered with many hindrances; and to make us all willing to learn by Thy providences, and to see in our daily life

Thy providences, as well as to learn by Thy grace and word.

And now, Lord, we commend ourselves, and all whom we love, and all our brethren who hold the Head, and profess and call themselves Christians, to Thy gracious care, beseeching Thee that Thou wouldst lead them, and help them to lead the world, into paths of righteousness and peace. Bless, we pray Thee, all honest work done for Thee and for men, and help all those to whom Thou hast entrusted any precious things of mind or estate to impart these to their fellows, and to feel that Thou dost give to them Thy grace in its manifold forms, that through them it may pass to all others.

Now, Lord, we would commit ourselves to Thy care, and beseech Thee to be near us and help us in our worship, and accept it, and accept us, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.