1
At the end of a busy day
1 Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who givest strength to the weary.
The Hebrew Prayer Book
2 Dear God, here I am before you. I’m tired – so tired. I keep wondering what happened to my boundless enthusiasm for the life you’ve given me. Where did it go? When did I lose it?
In place of my enthusiasm, I feel dried out. Deadened.
I don’t feel like your victorious child, God. Why has this happened to me? How did I let this happen? Why did you let it happen?
I know all the right things to say. I know that my strength lies in you, that without you I can do nothing. And yet, here I am, powerless, worn out, and weak.
Let me feel your strength, O God –
- the power of your Holy Spirit filling my weary body,
- the energy of your love flowing through me,
- the joy of your salvation bubbling up through my heart.
Take my weariness, my fatigue, and my heaviness. Lift them from my spirit. Fill me with joy, enthusiasm, and zest for life and the tasks before me.
Help me to see every new day as a perfect gift from you, to be lived fully and powerfully, secure in the knowledge that you will provide me with the strength I need to do this.
(Take three deep breaths, imagining that each one is bringing in energy and strength.)
Thank you, O God, for taking this weariness from me. Thank you for restoring my strength.
Patricia Wilson
3 I am tired, Lord,
too tired to think,
too tired to pray,
too tired to do anything.
Too tired,
drained of resources,
‘labouring at the oars against a head wind’,
pressed down by a force as strong as the sea.
Lord of all power and might,
‘your way was through the sea,
your path through the great waters’,
calm my soul,
take control,
Lord of all power and might.
Rex Chapman
4 May he, who with a calm mind slept in the stern,
then got up and commanded the winds and the sea,
grant that, while my limbs rest here, weary with heavy work,
my mind may keep vigil with him.
Lamb of God, who bore all the sins of the world,
keep my calm rest safe from the enemy.
Alcuin, 735–804
5 Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore,
Never tired pilgrim’s limbs affected slumber more,
Than my wearied spirite now longs to fly out of my troubled breast:
O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest!
Thomas Campion, 1567–1620
6 O God, you know how I feel, and you know that to-night I am so tired that I can hardly stay awake to pray. But, before I go to sleep, I must say thank you for to-day and I must ask your forgiveness for everything in it that was not right.
Help me now to fall asleep thinking about you, and to waken to-morrow to live for you.
This I ask for your love’s sake. Amen.
William Barclay, 1907–78
7 O Lord, Jesus Christ, Who art as the Shadow of a Great Rock in a weary land, Who beholdest thine weak creatures weary of labour, weary of pleasure, weary of hope deferred, weary of self; in Thine abundant compassion, and fellow feeling with us, and unutterable tenderness, bring us, we pray thee, unto Thy rest . . . Amen.
Christina Rossetti, 1830–94
8 We come before Thee, O Lord, in the end of thy day with thanksgiving.
Our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who are now beginning the labours of the day what time we end them, and those with whom the sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help, console, and prosper them.
Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour come to rest. We resign into thy hands our sleeping bodies, our cold hearths, and open doors. Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling. As the sun returns in the east, so let our patience be renewed with dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so let our loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitation.
Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850–94
