Deborah Kapp

March 13, 2018

“Where do you go when you need a prayer?” someone asked me the other day. That may be a question that many of us have asked. No matter how adept we are at talking with God or interceding for others, every one of us sometimes needs a bit of support in our prayer life. So, where do I go when I need a prayer? Today I share three resources with you, each of which I commend.

The prayers I pray most frequently are the hymns or songs I sing, and many of my favorite ones are prayer texts. For example, the week after 9/11 I found myself singing Our God, Our Help in Ages Past a gazillion times. Last week, I walked around my house doing laundry and stuff like that, as I sang (who knows why), Lord, Prepare Me to Be a Sanctuary. When my sister-in-law died, I went to www.cyberhymnal.org and sang all the hymns I could think of that suited a funeral. Do you want to know the truth? I go to church so that I can sing hymns, and they are my primary avenue for prayer.

I’m also very fond of an ecumenical prayer website sponsored by the World Council of Churches: https://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/prayer-cycle?b_start:int=2. With this site, I am able to pray and sing with people all over the world. Each week, a few countries are identified for prayer. The site identifies concerns voiced by people from those countries, and it also includes prayers and songs written by Christians there. The prayers range from ancient to contemporary. This week we are praying for Scandinavian countries, and I am enamored of the prayer I found there today, “Heaven in the soles of my feet.”

Finally, for a more standard prayer, I sometimes turn to the Northumbrian community in England, which publishes daily prayer on its website: https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/how-to-use-daily-office/. Short litanies for morning, midday, and evening prayer are included on the site. These sorts of prayers quiet me down and center me, for which I am most grateful, because sometimes everyday life gets me all worked up.

Where do you turn when you need a prayer?

I close with a brief prayer from the Wednesday compline liturgy of Northumbria:

“Calm me, O Lord, as you stilled the storm.

Still me, O Lord, keep me from harm.

Let all the tumult within me cease.

Enfold me, Lord, in your peace.”