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Praying about the flow of time: Daily rhythms of prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday October 22 2024

Praying about the flow of time: Daily rhythms of prayer

Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy,
Whose trust, ever child-like, no cares can destroy,
Be there at our waking, and give us, we pray,
Your bliss in our hearts, Lord, at the break of the day.

That hymn has been playing on repeat in my mind recently. It is sung to the traditional Irish tune of “Be Thou My Vision.” It has four verses, each focused on a different time of day. You can listen to it, with beautiful views of Westminster Abbey, here.

The author, Jan Struther, wrote the words in 1931, a few years before she began writing a column for The Times of London about Mrs. Miniver, “an ordinary sort of woman who leads an ordinary sort of life.” Her columns were later collected into a book, which was made into an Academy Award winning 1942 film, “Mrs. Miniver.” Maybe Jan Struther’s hymn about daily rhythms helped her think about ordinary moments of daily life for her Times column.

In this blog post, I will juxtapose each verse of Struther’s hymn with another similar prayer. I invite you to pray the words as you read them.

Morning prayers are easy to find. Here’s one of my favorites:

"Faithful God, I have awakened to your new day. Let me rejoice and be glad in it. I turn to you at its threshold because I depend completely on your strength. I have not made myself, cannot keep myself, could never save myself. And so, loving God, I give myself to you for this day — my creator, keeper and savior."
—Cornelius Plantinga, Morning and Evening Prayers [1]

The second verse of “Lord of all Hopefulness” focuses on midday and work:

Lord of all eagerness, Lord of all faith,
Whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe,
Be there at our labors, and give us, we pray,
Your strength in our hearts, Lord, at the noon of the day.

The Apostle Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1 juxtaposes nicely with our mid-day concerns about work, productivity, and fruitfulness. I sometimes pray this for myself.

"For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light."
—Colossians 1:9-12

Mrs. Miniver, Jan Struthers’s ordinary woman in the early part of the 20th century, was a housewife. Yet Struther’s hymn about the rhythms of daily life includes “homing” after work in the evening.

Lord of all kindliness, Lord of all grace,
Your hands swift to welcome, your arms to embrace,
Be there at our homing, and give us, we pray,
Your love in our hearts, Lord, at the eve of the day.

The word “homing” made me think about how we pray about our homes. Some of us spend most of the day in them, some come and go all day, and others have a work schedule that takes us away for many hours a day. Whatever our pattern, our homes are worthy of prayer because they play a significant role in the patterns of our days.

Anglican bishop and royal chaplain Thomas Ken (1637-1711) wrote a prayer that is inscribed on the door of St. Stephen’s Church in London. It is often used in house blessings. You’ll see its relevant to church buildings as well as homes. I am praying it for my home right now:

"O God, make the door of this house wide enough to receive all who need human love and fellowship, narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride and strife. Make its threshold smooth enough to be no stumbling-block to children, nor to straying feet, but rugged and strong enough to turn back the tempter's power."

A common time for prayer has always been bedtime. The second oldest book of Christian liturgy, the Gelasian Sacramentary, dating from the eighth century or before, has a prayer that enables us to pray for our night-time fears:

Lighten our darkness,
Lord, we pray;
and in your mercy
defend us from all perils and dangers of this night;
for the love of your only Son,
our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. [2]

Note that Jan Struther’s prayer for sleep completely avoids mentioning fear of the dark. Instead, she focuses on Jesus’s gentleness, calm, contentment, and balm.

Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm,
Whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm,
Be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray,
Your peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.

We are still in the church season of Ordinary Time. One of the emphases of this season is Christian discipleship, and I love the way Jan Struther’s hymn draws us into prayer about four different parts of the day. I invite you to return to the prayer in this post that was most moving to you and pray it one more time.

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Next week: All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day. Illustration by Dave Baab.

Previous posts about rhythms:

[1] Cornelius Plantinga, Morning and Evening Prayers (Eerdmans: 2021), p. 2.
[2] Mary Wilder Tileston, Prayers Ancient and Modern  (Little Brown, 1914), p. 341.



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