A Prayer for This Day

Oh Gracious and Loving God, you who have loved us with the all-encompassing love of a mother, we pause for a few moments today to look at our lives and note the many gifts of your love.

For your creative genius that saw in each of us a spark of potential and divine possibility then lovingly nurtured us into life, we are so grateful.

For your gentle care and loving guidance steering us through times of easy calm and holding us steady in those moments when we can barely see what’s right in front of us, we thank you, Lord.

And in those times when the fury of life is raging strong, when we feel the very moorings of our souls threatening to shake loose, we can recall the protection of your wings as you gather us in and hold us safe.

Knowing and celebrating all of this love surrounding and upholding us, we pray for all of us who carry disappointments in our hearts, the disappointments of a human love that often fails to live up to the standards you have set and modeled. For those of us who have not often felt the nurturing care of a human mother . . . who have lost someone like a mother to us . . . whose arms are achingly empty hoping to be called mother by someone, let us all on this day feel the warmth of your embrace and the gift of your gathering love surrounding and upholding us as only you can.

Continue this day, great God of nurturing love, to feed us with your presence and strengthen us with your love, so that we might grow and thrive and become everything you dreamed for our lives—even your representatives of hope, healing, and reconciliation for the whole world. Loving God, Mother of us all, with this end in mind we pray together the prayer Jesus taught us . . .