Calm me down...

Prayer for an Average Sunday

~ Kenneth G. Phifer

Eternal God, look now upon me as I wait,

stilled for a time,

subdued and quiet.

You know that it is hard for me to wait.

It is hard for me to be still.

I rush from one thing to another,

churning up my life

into hectic waves of accomplishment.

When night falls, I confess I feel a bit guilty

if I have done nothing except be myself.

I even come to prayer with the feeling

that it is apart from life,

that when it is over I had best do something.

Even in church I want to sing a hymn

or take up an offering.

And then when church is over,

I plunge back into my world where the action is.

O Lord, do I have it wrong,

twisted around?

Are there more occasions than I realize

when I would be a better person

if I didn't do anything but just stand there?

Do I fail to hear the real needs

of loved ones, friends, and neighbors,

because I am too busy figuring out

what next to do for them,

or maybe to them?

Am I so absorbed in running the world

that I am not aware of you

and of the things you have to say to me?

Calm me down, I pray.

Calm me down

to the place where I can remember

how many times you have managed to keep me going

when I thought I could not make it.

Calm me down

so that I can recall times of steadiness and fear

when a courage was infused in me

that enabled me to hold on.

Calm me down

so that I can accept my limitations without panic

and in the knowledge that I cannot do everything.

In many ways I do not do anything.

In some ways I do the wrong things.

In the silence before the mystery and the meaning,

I stand waiting,

still,

quieted by wonder.

For life is filled with mystery, meaning, and wonder.

The mystery of being itself.

The meaning that keeps breaking through to me,

meaning encompassed in words

like faith, hope, and love.

And I wonder why when I pray, I believe,

and why when I believe, I pray.

May I be assured that what I do matters

and what I say counts,

because you are in me and for me.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

-- Kenneth G. Phifer, A Book of Uncommon Prayer

Nashville: The Upper Room, 1981

(a book given to me by my church family at Searsport (Maine) United Methodist Church when I graduated from high school ~ it's inscribed June 5, 1988 ~ that I've carried with me all these years)