Another incredible tool for growing and expanding your prayer life is liturgies. If you grew up in a more liturgical or structured church background, you might already be familiar with how a liturgy helps one pray, but if not, this may be a totally new tool for you.

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When talking about prayer specifically, a liturgy is a written prayer that is designed to be applicable to many people and adaptable to one’s own life situation. Often in liturgical church settings, these are read together as a congregation, but liturgies can also be a blessing in one’s individual prayer life. Especially in those moments when the words just don’t come or praying feels hard, turning to a liturgy can allow you to communicate with God when you don’t have the words yourself.

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Today, I invite you to try allowing this liturgy to guide and inspire your prayer time with God. It is from a book of liturgies I highly recommend, called Every Moment Holy by Douglas Kaine McKelvey. It has prayers for all kinds of moments in one’s life: for the morning of a medical procedure, a prayer for first responders, for the first snow, a prayer to pray before consuming media, before moving into a new home, for the anniversary of a loss, and more.

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Today I want to share with you “A Liturgy for First Waking.” May it guide your prayer time this morning.

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“I am not the captain of my own destiny,

nor even of this new day, and so

I renounce anew all claim

to my own life and desires.

I am only yours, O Lord.

Lead me by your mercies through these hours,

that I might spend them well,

not in harried pursuit of my own agendas, but

rather in good service to you.

Teach me to shepherd the small duties

of this day with great love,

tending faithfully those tasks

you place within my care

and tending with patience and

kindness the needs and hearts of

those people you place within my reach.

Nothing is too hard for you, Lord Christ.

I deposit now all confidence in you

that whatever these waking hours bring,

my foundations will not be shaken.

At day’s end I will lay me down again to sleep

knowing that my best hope is well kept in you.

In all things your grace will sustain me.

Bid me follow,

and I will follow.

Amen.”