a prayer for the weary

Sometimes it feels like it’s one thing after another after another.

It can be the big things like the diagnosis, the job, the isolation, the unpredictable future.

And it can be the ordinary things like the raising of babies, the alarm in the morning, the same conversation yet again.

It’s the rhetoric that we hear from candidates, feeding fear and anxiety and making us wonder if we should, in fact, lock our doors and build our walls and isolate and befriend only those like us.

It’s the reports on the news and the pictures of the wounded and the worry yet again of Yes, but are we safe? 

It’s when we get the call from the doctor that says “Well, it’s not good,” but also when the baby is up all night and we don’t know if we have it in us to get through a whole new day.

It’s when our safety and our normal and our predictable is ripped right out from under our feet but also when every single day feels the exact same as the one before.

Father, we’re tired from carrying the load.

Father, we’re weary.

I suppose it makes sense when the world feels heavy.

We long for peace, we cling to hope, we believe in goodness.

But sometimes, Father?

It just feels really, really heavy.

We’re weary from taking step after step, day after day and still feeling the heavy load, still feeling the fear, still hearing the reports of yet another attack.

And so we remember – we desperately long to remember – that this very week, you also took step after step, feeling the heavy load.

Help us to remember your journey of love despite everything going on around you so that we too, can walk within love despite everything going on around us.

Father, forgive us for listening to our exhaustion and our fear more closely than we do to your truth.  We know that you are with us and we know you fight for us and we know that you are good.  Help us to remember that the mountains may shake and the world may tremble but you are the one thing that remains.

Exchange fear for peace.

Exchange anxiety for trust.

Exchange exhaustion for hope.

Exchange our heavy burden for your light yoke.

Help us to keep going.  Give us the courage to do the hard thing, say the needed thing, believe in the true thing.  It is only in you, through you, because of you, that we can live a marvelously brave life.

It is only you that holds this together.

And so this week, as our days feel weary, as the world feels heavy, we seek your freedom.  And this week, as we are weary from the big and the ordinary, anxious from the words and the rhetoric, fearful from the news, overwhelm us with your grace.  Remind us that you’re good.  Give us the strength to keep choosing love.

And you know more than anyone how costly love is.

But this week, remind us also that love always, always wins.  

//xoxoxo//