From The Desk of Deacon Judy

Prayer – For Our Beleaguered Heart

Recently I stumbled across a book of collects entitled Prayers for the Pilgrimage: A Book of Collects for All of Life.

Here’s the backstory from the website for InterVarsity Press:

“Prayers for every aspect of life

During the pandemic, priest and theologian David Taylor began writing collects (an ancient form of short prayer) as a daily spiritual exercise. It was a way for him to offer back to God his own fears and anxieties. As time went on, he began to receive requests for written prayers from friends and even strangers for a wide variety of circumstances and needs. His collection of prayers grew until it numbered in the hundreds.

Prayers for the Pilgrimage is a compilation of Taylor's prayers, arranged by topic and accompanied by a series of paintings by his wife, Phaedra. Here are prayers for morning and evening, work and play, public life and private life, doubt and faith—from Advent to Lent, from birth to death.

The Christian faith invites us to pray all of our lives back to God, lest we begin to believe that there is any part of our lives that God doesn't see or isn't interested in seeing. Prayers for the Pilgrimage gives us not only specific prayers but also a model for understanding our whole lives as prayer.” https://www.ivpress.com/prayers-for-the-pilgrimage

I copied several prayers, but this one resonates for me today:

God’s peace,

Judy Q+