Thursday, Week 13

So we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and He granted our request.
— Ezra 8:23 (BSB)

He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life.
— William Law

Our Father who are in Heaven, we come to You with the children's confidence, saying, Abba, Father. Teach us to love You and trust You. Put into our hearts the spirit of adoption.

We thank You for the privileges we enjoy as Your children. Help us to realize what they are. Reveal Your love to us. We cannot see You, and we are so slow to believe that You love us. Make known to us this precious fact, and may Your love be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

We thank You for all our blessings — the good things of Your providence, the better things of Your grace. We thank You for our home and its tender affections. We thank You for our friends, and for all the gentle friendships that bless our lives. We thank You for our children, and for their sweetness and beauty. We thank You for schools, for books, and for teachers. We thank You for Your church, with its ordinances, its sacraments, its fellowships, and for the help that comes to us from it in so many ways.

Grant to us a blessing now at the ending of another day. Receive out of our hands all the work we have done, and bless it. Forgive us all our sins, and strengthen our weakness that we may not sin against You so readily. May we learn to live in this world, as not belonging to it — but as only pilgrims, passing through the world to our heavenly inheritance. Yet we desire to live well while we stay here, using the world and not abusing it, and living in it so as to leave a blessing in it. Lead us on and on, to the end, and then bring us to the close of life's last day in peace, and to Heaven's immortality, through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen.