Prayers and Meditations for Personal and Family Use
Morning Prayer 
Merciful God, thank You for keeping watch over us last night. As we face a new day, may we fix our eyes on Christ as our only hope and Your glory as our only aim. You alone are worthy of this glory because You are the very author of our life, the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists. The heavens declare to all Your wisdom, power, goodness, and faithfulness. Yet our highest praise is reserved for the great deeds of redemption that You have worked for us poor sinners. Bound in our sin, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, by nature children of wrath even as the rest, we have nevertheless heard the good news that You have delivered us from slavery, freed us from the condemnation of Your just law, and brought us new life from above. Even as we face our ordinary tasks this day, recall to our hearts the extraordinary comfort of Your promise. Grant also, we pray, the strength of Your Spirit to live out the callings You have given to us and all people as creatures made in Your image. Make us fit vessels for Your work in this world this day—a sacrifice of thanksgiving, well pleasing in Your sight and a light that shines before our neighbors. All of this we ask in the name of Your Son, who taught us to pray, saying: “Our Father …”
Evening Prayer
Merciful God, we come to You now at the end of this day in the name of our Savior, that Light shining in the darkness, dispelling the night of our sins and the blindness of our hearts. Lord of our labor, now be Lord of our rest. Free us of doubts, anxieties, and temptations, and continue to work Your sanctifying grace in us even as we sleep. Remembering that we are not only frail but sinful, we ask You to defend us from all dangers, but especially from the assaults of the world and the devil, as well as from the disease of our own hearts. We confess that we have not spent this day without grievously sinning against You, to whom all hearts are open and no wickedness is hidden. Yet, clothed in the righteousness of Your dear Son, we call on Your name and claim Your salvation. Give us repentant and believing hearts that delight in following Your ways. We ask also that You would be with those who are afflicted with grief, pain, temptation, doubts, and especially for [specific requests]. Together with them, preserve us all in one communion and body until we enter at last Your everlasting rest. This we ask in the name of Christ our Savior. Amen.
A Child’s Prayer at Bed—1
adapted from Luther’s Small Catechism
Dear heavenly Father, I thank You for protecting me today. Please forgive all my sins. Preserve my body and soul tonight, and give me rest. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
A Child’s Prayer at Bed—2
using the following hymn
All praise to Thee, my God, this night,
for all the blessings of the light:
keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
beneath Thine own almighty wings.
Forgive me, Lord, for Thy dear Son,
the ill that I this day have done;
that with the world, myself, and Thee,
I, ere I sleep, at peace may be.
O may my soul on Thee repose,
and with sweet sleep mine eyelids close;
sleep that shall me more vigorous make
to serve my God when I awake.
Prayer before Meals
Our gracious heavenly Father, the eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand; You satisfy the desire of every living thing. You attend to our every need through the creatures You have made, especially through our neighbors, whose vocations serve to bring these provisions to our table, and so we ask a special blessing on those who have prepared it for us. If not even a sparrow can fall from the sky or a hair fall from our head, apart from Your fatherly care and wisdom, we cannot fail to look to You alone for security in this life, as also in the life to come. So give us grateful hearts as we pray, saying: “Our Father …”
A Child’s Prayer before Meals — 1
Martin Luther
Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,
and let these gifts to us be blessed.
May our souls by You be fed,
ever on the living bread. Amen.
A Child’s Prayer before Meals — 2
Johann Habermann (1516–1590)
Jesus, bless what You have given,
Feed our souls with bread from heaven;
Guide and lead us all the way,
In all that we may do and say. Amen.
Prayer after Meals
Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, who gives food to all flesh, for His steadfast love endures forever. We thank You, Lord, for Your good gifts of food and drink. We thank You for Your providential care that causes the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate. And so we give thanks for all those who have served us by preparing what we have just enjoyed. And as we give thanks for the gift of this food, we praise You above all else for Your greatest gift, Your Son, Jesus Christ, who is the food and drink of our souls. [Specific prayers may be added.] Amen.
A Child’s Prayer after Meals
Johann Habermann (1516–1590)
We thank You, Lord, for this our food,
We thank You more for Jesus’ blood;
Let manna to our souls be given,
The bread of life sent down from heaven. Amen.
Prayer for All the Persecuted Church
O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, we cry out on behalf of our brothers and sisters who are suffering affliction because of persecution. In particular, we pray for [specific intercessions added here]. We ask, with the church in heaven, how long it will be before You judge and avenge their blood on those who dwell on the earth.Grant them courage to know that You are their refuge and strength, a very present help in time of need. By the ministry of Your Holy Spirit, bring comfort to their hearts, so that they are not left as orphans. Deliver them out of all their afflictions. But should it be Your will that persecuted Christians must by their death witness to Your truth, grant them to know that their trial comes as from Your hand. Permit not the memory of Your name to be removed from the earth, but may the blood of the martyrs be the seed of the church, and thus cause persecutors to become Your people. This we pray in the name of Jesus, the faithful witness, who died but rose again. Amen.
Prayer for All in Civil Authority
Almighty God, whose kingdom alone is everlasting, and whose power alone is infinite, have mercy upon our land. Grant to [specific name mentioned here], and to all others in authority, wisdom, righteousness, and strength to know and to do Your will. So rule their hearts that they, knowing whose servants they are, may above all things seek Your honor and glory. Enable us to know whose authority they bear and therefore faithfully and obediently honor them according to Your blessed Word and ordinance; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who, with You and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns forever, one God, world without end. Amen.
Prayer for Missions
adapted from the Book of Common Prayer
O God the Father, whose Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the desire of all nations, and who came down from heaven to seek and to save the lost; grant Your blessing upon Your missionary servants who are carrying the light of Your gospel into the darkness. We pray particularly for [specific missions?/?missionaries, church plants?/?church planters]. Preserve them from every danger to which they may be exposed: from perils by land and sea, from persecution and pestilence, from discouragement in their labors, and from the devices of the adversary. May they see Your work prospering through their words and deeds. Hasten the fullness of Your kingdom, pour out Your Spirit upon all flesh, cause multitudes of those who neglect Your salvation to seek after You and find You, and so gather multitudes into Your church. Hasten the day when those in every land shall be converted to You. Lord Jesus, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, we give You all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.
Prayer before Communion
Eternal and almighty Father, we commemorate today the death of Your Son in the celebration of the holy Supper. He ordained it as a pledge of His love to us and for our remembrance of His sufferings that have ransomed us from our sins. Although we are sinners, unworthy in ourselves to be partakers of Your holy sacraments, we are invited to this sacred meal, not because we are worthy in ourselves, but because we are clothed in Christ’s perfect righteousness. And as we come to You in repentance from our sins and in faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray that You would further sanctify us by Your Holy Spirit, that we may serve You acceptably in showing forth with faith and joy the death of our Savior, and that we may glorify You by living holy lives; through Jesus Christ. Amen.
Prayer after Communion
Heavenly Father, we give You eternal praise and thanks that You have granted so great a benefit to us poor sinners, having drawn us into the communion of Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. You delivered Him to death for us, and You give Him to us as the food and drink of life eternal. Now grant us this other benefit: that You will never allow us to forget these truths. Having them written on our hearts, may we grow and increase daily in the faith that is at work in every good deed. Thus may we order and pursue all our life to the exaltation of Your glory and the edification of our neighbors; through Jesus Christ, who, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns with You, O God, forever. Amen.
Prayer for the Sick and the Spiritually Distressed—1
Eternal God, the only Creator, Preserver, Judge, and Savior of the world, You alone hold the powers of life and death. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when He had conquered death and hell, announced, “I was dead, but I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades in my hand.” Yet often our circumstances seem to testify against Your promise. What we see does not appear to agree with what we have heard. Yet, even at the cross, where You seemed so absent and Your Son seemed so cruelly and unjustly abandoned by You, we have been taught that He was thereby fulfilling Your purposes to redeem us from the power of darkness. We confess that our hearts are so bound to the realities that we see with our eyes in the moment, that we easily forget the greater realities that we hear with our ears through Your Word.
Teach us through these trials to number our days, recognizing that we are but fading in this age, but will flourish in the age to come. We know that these struggles are not tokens of Your wrath, but are part of Your plan to save us, sanctify us, and glorify Yourself. While we may fear the circumstances, we no longer fear the condemnation of the law, the sting of death, or the sharp arrows of Satan. For we know that Your Son gained victory for us by His death and resurrection. We ask that You would, even through these tests, deepen our confidence to appear before You clothed, not in the filthy rags of our own works, but in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ our Savior. Continue to look upon us in Him, for we pray in His name, who taught us to pray, saying: “Our Father …”
Prayer for the Sick and the Spiritually Distressed—2
Eternal and merciful God and Father, the eternal salvation of the living and the eternal life of the dying, You alone have life and death in Your hands. You continually care for us in such a way that neither health nor sickness, neither good nor evil, can befall us—indeed, not even a hair can fall from our heads—without Your will. You order all things for the good of believers.
We ask that You will grant us the grace of the Holy Spirit, that He may teach us to know truly our miseries, and to bear patiently Your chastisements, which, as far as our merits are concerned, might have been ten thousand times more severe. We know that they are not tokens of Your wrath, but of Your fatherly love for us, that we might not be condemned with the world.
Increase our faith by Your Holy Spirit, that we may become more and more united with Christ, to whom You desire to conform us, both in suffering and in glory. Lighten our cross, so that we in our weakness may be able to bear it. We submit ourselves without reserve to Your holy will, whether You leave our souls here in these earthly tents or take them home to Yourself. We have no fear, because we belong to Christ and therefore shall not perish. We even desire to depart from this weak body in the hope of a blessed resurrection, knowing that then it will be restored to us in a much more glorious form.
Grant that we may experience the blessed comfort of the remission of sins and justification in Christ. May we with that defense overcome all the assaults of Satan. May Jesus’ innocent blood wash away our stain, and may His righteousness cover our unrighteousness in Your judgment at last. Arm us with faith and hope, that we may not be put to shame by any fear of death. May the eyes of our soul be fixed upon You when the eyes of our body become dim. When You take from us the power of speech, may our hearts never cease to call upon You. O Lord, we commit our souls into Your hands; do not forsake us in the hour of death. This we pray only for the sake of Christ, who taught us to pray, saying: “Our Father…”
Prayer for the Sick and the Spiritually Distressed—3
O almighty, eternal, and righteous God, our merciful Father: You are the Lord of life and death; without Your will, nothing happens in heaven or on earth. We are not worthy to call upon Your name, nor to hope that You will listen to us, when we consider how we have spent our time in this life. Yet we pray that You will, according to Your mercy, look upon us in Christ, who has taken upon Himself all our infirmities. We acknowledge that on account of who we are, apart from Him, we deserve far more than this affliction.
But Lord, we are Your people, and You are our God. Your mercy, which You have never withheld from those who turn to You, is our only refuge. Therefore, we pray, count not our sins against us, but impute to us the wisdom, righteousness, and holiness of our Savior. For His sake, deliver us from this suffering, in order that the Evil One may not regard us as forsaken by God. And if it pleases You to prolong our trial, give us patience and strength to bear it all according to Your will, and may it in Your wisdom be for our edification.
We would rather be chastised here, Lord, than have to perish with the world hereafter. Grant that we may die to this world and to all earthly things, that we may be renewed daily after the image of Jesus Christ. Permit us never to be separated from Your love, but draw us daily closer and closer to You, that at last we may enter with joy upon the end of our divine calling, which is to die with Christ, rise with Him triumphantly, and live with Him eternally. We also believe that You will hear us through Jesus Christ, who has taught us to pray, saying: “Our Father …”
Consolation of the Sick
A Brief Instruction in the True Faith and in the Way of Salvation, to Die Willingly, by Cornelis van Hille in Norwich, England, 1571
Introduction
The “Consolation of the Sick,” with the accompanying “Comforting Sayings of Holy Scripture,” certainly does not belong to the Liturgy of the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands. It is entirely a private writing, composed and published by Cornelis van Hille, Sr., in (or before) 1579, and was never adopted or approved by any ecclesiastical assembly. But already from the sixteenth century onward, printers and publishers commonly printed it with the church’s liturgical materials. As a result, it received a de facto privilege over similar tracts. That is why the text is printed here as well.