Morning prayer · 10 May

Some definite service

A single wooden tool with no label lies on a workbench, its exact purpose unknown, while a hand reaches toward it in the half-light, ready to be picked up and used for whatever it was made for.

Lord, you created me to do you some definite service. You’ve given me some work you haven’t given anyone else. I have a mission. I may never know it in this life, but you’ll tell me in the next. You haven’t made me for nothing. Lord, my Wisdom, God with us, I give myself to you. I trust you completely. You’re wiser than I am, and you love me more than I love myself. Carry out your great purposes in me, whatever they are. Work in me and through me. I was born to serve you, to be yours, to be your instrument. Use me even when I can’t see why. I don’t ask to see. I don’t ask to know. I simply ask to be used. Amen.

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life.

Ephesians 2:10 (BSB)

Adapted from John Henry Newman, Meditations and Devotions (1893), in plain words. The verse is from the Berean Standard Bible (public domain). Drawing: Mutter.