Daily and Occasional Prayers
Weekday Prayers
Morning Prayer
I awaken this day in the Light of God’s sacred love. This day I renew my dedication to serve God by holding this love as my highest value. Today I will meet many temptations and may struggle with the efforts of darkness to tear me away from this love. I will meet these temptations through faith that there is no power greater than this love and that in my encounter with the darkness I have the help of the holy angels who bear God’s love for me and have come to teach me. I will make my way through this day with confidence that this faith has the power to use the darkness to teach me and to strengthen me, as well as the power to dispel the darkness by exposing it to the Light. I will know that I am not alone by seeing the power of God’s love aiding and supporting me to the extent of my dedication to serve it.
May God grant me through this love the ability to forgive those who may offend me, not by releasing them from their responsibility, which is not mine to judge, but by seeing the darkness that limits them and realizing that they, like me, are involved in a spiritual journey. May God allow me to see that God wants them closer to this Light, just as God wants me. May God also allow me to see my own darkness, and through the illumination of this great love transform it into an occasion for teaching and healing rather than condemnation. May God, with the help of the instructing angels, make this day for me a step I take closer to the divine, so that at its end I may look at this day and say that I have served God well.
May my prayers remind me always to come back to God and to God’s love as my highest value during the many times that I may fall, and may they help me meet this day with quiet faith, persevering love, and a sense of the loving Presence that is beyond my ability ever to fully comprehend.
Afternoon Prayer
Only God’s love is holy. Only God’s love is sacred. Let me renew my devotion to the sacred every day. Every day, let me enter upon this sacred ground and take off my shoes and pray to see the sacredness that surrounds me. May it answer me, returning its love for my devotion. This is the only thing that matters. Nothing else matters. Nothing else will endure. Every human name will be forgotten over the course of time. Every suffering will be erased. But God is eternal, and His messengers of love will continue His work throughout eternity.
Short Version for Busy Days
Let me remember the sacredness of this moment and treasure every moment as an open invitation to God’s love.
Evening Prayer
I thank the Lord, whose child I am, and I thank the angels who have been with me this day. May (the work I have done this day and) the service I have offered help to increase the visibility of the presence of God’s true love on earth. For that which I have done that is pleasing, let me be grateful. If I have fallen into error, let me rest secure in the knowledge that I have done my best in a spirit of dedication to God’s holy work. If I have lapsed into temptation, may my angels correct me and show me the right way; may I recognize my error and receive its teaching to increase the divine Light within me. In this spirit may I offer this day completed now to God, and let me rest this night cradled in God’s love, to be with me as a presence when once again I awaken.
Reminder Prayer
Creator God:
Let a portion of your love
Enter my heart this day.
Bless it and keep it,
That it may protect me from evil influences
And become a light from your Light
Within our world.
Sabbath Prayers
Sabbath Eve Prayer
I now prepare to enter the sacred realm of Sabbath rest. Here I wait with the Lord in sweet repose, having offered this week’s work in a spirit of service. “Come to me, and I will give you rest”: rest from burdens and pressures both physical and mental, from the weight of this world’s concerns in expectation of their eternal fulfillment. In eternity everything is resolved. May this Sabbath become a still, lingering moment that brings a hint of the eternal. In this moment may I sense my soul’s restoration and complete healing.
Sabbath Morning Prayer
Creator God, this morning I awaken within your Sabbath rest, which brings a foretaste of the life we will know when pain is behind us and we are finally healed. Let me find nourishment in this rest, let me see you leading me by the still waters, let your love enter me and bring me its hints of life in celestial harmony. Let this love flow into me, cleansing my soul, healing the wounds of the week that has passed, giving me comfort and renewed strength to meet the challenges that still lie ahead of me during my existence on earth. Let me stop to hear the sacred heartbeat of the eternal life that remains constant while continuously moving, flowing, supporting our life here on earth. Let me find the still moment when all is at rest and I can hear your voice speaking without sound, blessing and sustaining the world.
Sabbath Afternoon Prayer
I come back now to the rest, the rest that has accompanied and sustained me this day. Let me feel the quietness and gentleness of the Sabbath afternoon, the midpoint of the regeneration that this special day brings. May God’s love entering my soul become clearer as my soul becomes quiet, letting preoccupations and distractions settle and subside, allowing me to behold the entrance of this love as a ray of sunlight. Let me remember the sacredness of this day, different from that of any other day because it brings the divine presence directly through the soul’s reverent rest, filling the quiet and receptive heart.
Special Prayers
A Music Therapist’s Prayer
Dear God, as I get ready to play or sing today, let me feel your love enter me through the music I will make, and pass through me to those who will hear. Let this music tell of your presence, making mine invisible to my listeners. In this way let the music become a channel for the healing of the soul.
Prayer for Those I Serve
May God hold in loving hands all those who are suffering whom I have served this day. May the Lord surround them with love, and may this love enter them and reach beyond their darkness, healing them in body and soul. May they know the gentle yet enduring peace of God’s heavenly realm, and may they be open to the guidance of their angels waiting to lead them home.
Prayer for Encouragement
Dear God, let me remember that I am not here for myself alone, but am called as a servant for the sake of your love, to make this love real and manifest and known to others. May I fulfill this task in the way I speak, in the way I sing, in the way I write, in the compassionate attention and presence I bring to the care of those I serve. Dear Lord, let me remember your great love, how it has always been present with me in the past, how it guides me now and will forever be with me, in my mortal future and in ages to come. If I am weak now, let me rest, as Elijah did, waiting for his soul’s nourishment, which his guiding angel brought to him. If I am discouraged, let me remember that I am not to judge the call you have given me or the form that it should take. At times you call upon us to act. At other times you call upon us to step aside, to rest, to dwell for a moment in the dark shadows underneath the wings of your presence. If this is one of those times, allow me to recognize it and to accept it humbly. For you are with me, and you keep my guardians close to me always, never to leave me as long as the flame of my devotion is not extinguished. I maintain confidence that you will hold me through the darkness until, by the illumination of your great Light, I become able to discern whatever instruction you may wish me to receive.
Prayer for God’s Love in Time of Doubt
Creator God, I am here in pain and in desperation. I feel so much the cruelty of others around me. It wants to take the place of your love, as smoke from a smoldering fire blocks out the sunlight.
Let your love come into me and bring me peace. Let me know that while we all seem to be separated and in conflict, traveling along streams that diverge and seem destined never to meet, we are all being drawn to our common source. The burden of judgment is not mine; let me leave it on the bank of the river and continue on my journey toward the source. Let me leave this burden behind; instead, let your love enter me and reveal to me the sacredness of your wonderful heavenly creation, and let me know that I am a part of it too, that I belong to it and will never be lost from it.
Let me see the very small part of your love that I bear within my heart expand, until it fills the universe I will know with the knowledge of your loving and caring community. This will be a community when through our awareness of each other we will care for each other without calculation or expectation of personal gain. The seed of this community and this love is already present; you have planted it in my heart in my dedication to your service. Allow it now to grow, to give off its warmth, to surround me with an awareness of the radiance even of the outermost edge of your presence. This is only the beginning of what I will know as our true life to be lived in the consciousness of your nature and in the company of the angels who serve you.
Anything negative, evil, poisonous, frightening, or threatening will pass, as the cloud of smoke passes when the fire has extinguished itself. There is structure and law in the universe that extinguishes these flames; let me remember that this burden is not mine. Fires of darkness are kindled here on earth so that your love may be seen. Later on, when it is no longer so dark, the fires will pass, and we will behold the fullness of your love in perfect tranquility.
While I am still here, where the road barely begins, let me not mistake the present obscurity for the journey’s ending. I can already know just a little of this ending right now, by attending to the very tiny “mustard seed” of love you have already planted in my heart, and by hearing the “still, small voice” that speaks above thundering winds and roaring flames.
In the stillness of this love lies the strength to keep me immovable in the face of dangers, threats, fears, seductions, and the present cruelty of the human heart, and for this I give you thanks.