A Prayer Bouquet

          Just in time for spring! Here's a bouquet of a half-dozen one-line prayers plucked from the cover of The Presbyterian Outlook of about a dozen years ago. After a long, hard winter they might strike you as they did me - - as small blooms of inspiration. Some you may recognize.

You have given so much to me,/ Give one thing more, a grateful heart.
George Herbert

Those things, good Lord, that we pray for,/ Give us thy grace to labor for.
Sir Thomas More

Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our callings
that we may sleep in your peace and wake in your glory.
John Donne

O Lord, you know how busy I must be this day; if I
forget you, do not forget me: for Christ's sake.
General Sir Jacob Astley

O God, help us not to despise what we do not understand.
William Penn

Especially we pray You to make Christianity more Christian.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

From silly devotions/ and from sour-faced saints,/ good Lord, deliver us.
St. Teresa of Avila

          Now, we could look at these as reminders that there are always folks around who can say in a sentence what we labor at length to say- - or we can look at them as inspirations for our own praying. I say, let's choose the latter!

Grace and peace,

Rod