Dear God,

We ask you to help us close this week in as much love and healing as possible. We pray for those who maybe cannot pray for themselves or who are struggling with their faith in the light of a tragedy and/or hard time. We know you are good, God, and yet…the world pulls us away from you.

Lord, please come into our hearts and shine your light knowing that worries and anxieties are futile when we look towards you.

There is nothing on this Earth that you do not watch over and knows exists. You can fathom our pain, but you cannot prevent it.

Lord, how do we keep going when we wish you could prevent the pain we walk through and the pain and loss of others?

Tell me what we should do and where we should look. I have cast a net of hope, but I wonder how far it reaches?

I know in your loving gaze that the right and holy thing to do is to keep going, keep going onwards.

Onwards can seem unattainable and hard. Just very hard Lord, so we pray for the perseverance you can provide, so that those of us who feel that they cannot keep moving forward may get that extra energy to do so.

We also pray for those who may not have a lot of kindness at this moment. We know that healing is personal and we all deal with things in our own way, however God I would ask that you just put a protective shield over the most vulnerable and for those who feel full of judgement and “should’s” right now you remind them to be extra-kind.

There is no such thing as too much kindness especially when everything else feels very far away from that.

We also ask you for hope.

We know that in closing this week there isn’t a lot of hope, but we do ask you to provide hope and to continue to provide the comfort that your all-knowing all-encompassing love brings.

We ask you to be here, right here, and to show a sign that you are here to all of those who need to believe in something and are having doubts about you. The way the sun appears from behind a cloud. The song of a bird. A smile from a stranger. Just send us love-notes God from your beautiful spirit, so that we can begin to feel stronger.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.