Morning prayer · 4 May

For all these

A single old tree with many different hands reaching in from outside the frame to water its roots and prop up its branches, showing a lifetime of help received from many unseen sources, with the words “for all these, i thank you” lettered by hand.

Lord, thank you for my life and my mind, and for your care, protection and guidance. Thank you for your gifts of grace, for rescuing me, and for calling me, calling me back, and calling me again and again. Thank you for your patience with me, your long, long patience, through many years, up to now. Thank you for all the good I’ve received and been able to do, for what I have now and the hope of good things to come. Thank you for good parents, kind teachers, true friends, and all who’ve done me good by their words, prayers and example, even by correcting me. For all these, known and unknown, remembered and forgotten, I thank you and will thank you, all the days of my life. Amen.

Now therefore, our God, we give You thanks, and we praise Your glorious name.

1 Chronicles 29:13 (BSB)

Adapted from Lancelot Andrewes, Private Devotions (tr. J. H. Newman, 1840), in plain words. The verse is from the Berean Standard Bible (public domain). Drawing: Mutter.