MEDITATIONS BEFORE PRAYER
I turn towards You, and pray for those I love, who are dearer to me than life. Protect them as a father, and keep them from harm, in body, mind and spirit. Deepen their desire to know Your will, and strengthen them to do it. Help them in their struggle with the world, with selfishness, with laziness, and with forgetfulness of their own souls. Lord, help me as well, so that my own life does not contradict the life I desire for them. Let it serve them as an example, and help them in their struggle for goodness. I thank You for those who are dear to me, for the privilege of guiding their steps towards You, for the love which binds our hearts together, for its joy, for its solace, and for the strength it gives me in trouble and temptation. Help me to keep that love strong. May no selfishness or misunderstanding weaken it. May it bless me to the end! Amen. From Forms of Prayer 1930 God, I have not always been true to You in my thoughts. I have doubted Your goodness, Your justice and Your very existence. The pressures of life were too strong, its bitterness more than I could bear. Everything went wrong with my hopes and my plans, and there seemed no way out, no way to turn. I said, ‘There is no justice in this life of ours!’Sometimes my own suffering, but still more the suffering of others, strengthened my doubts. ‘Why,’I asked, ‘does God make His own children suffer? Where is God’s love? Where is God’s power?’At this point, You almost ceased to exist for me. Your hand would have held me, guided me, comforted me, but I lost touch with You. I should have looked for You more steadily, searched for You more diligently. Out of my limited experience and my small knowledge, I judged the source of justice, and set my cleverness higher than the ultimate wisdom. I saw only one side of truth – the darkness, not the light. I forgot the smiling face of life and its beauty. I also forgot that the pain of life itself can lead to deeper compassion, and is a teacher of great wisdom. Because I was proud, and claimed to understand what was beyond me, I did not see that human goodness is a token of its Creator’s goodness. Pardon my conceit and my blindness. Help me to greater detachment so that I may see with greater steadiness and calm. Help me to find order in the apparent chaos of human life, and love even in its defeats and trials. Your mercy is always there; You know and feel our pain. Amen. From Forms of Prayer 1930
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