A Celtic Prayer for First Days of Important and Ordinary Things

Brian uses this particular prayer book most often - Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and REadings from the Northumbria Community. He's the one who selected our first-day-of-school prayer for the girls yesterday.  

Thought you might find comfort and peace and new, good words to pray at the Beginning of an Important Thing.  Although, if your kids are younger you'll probably want to pick an excerpt or two.

Prayers for committing our work to God and for living out our Christianity in ordinary life

Oswald of Northumbria (605-42)

(*indicates a change of reader; all say together the sections in bold type)

*This day is Your gift to me;I take it, Lord, from Your hand and thank You for the wonder of it.

God be with me in this Your day, every day and every way, with me and for me in this Your day; and the love and affection of heaven be toward me.

*All that I am, Lord,

I place into Your hands.

All that I do, Lord,

I place into Your hands.

*Everything I work for

I place into Your hands.

Everything I hope for

I place into Your hands.

*The troubles that weary me

I place into Your hands.

The thoughts that disturb me

I place into Your hands.

*Each day that I pray for.

I place into Your hands.

Each that I care for

I place into Your hands.

*I place into Your hands, Lord, the choices that I face.

Guard me from choosing the way perilous of which the end is heart-pain and the secret tear.

*Rich in counsel, show us the way that is plain and safe.

*May I feel Your presence at the heart of my desire, and so know it for Your desire for me. Thus shall I prosper, thus see that my purpose is from You, thus have power to do the good which endures.

*Show me what blessing it is that I have work to do. And sometimes, and most of all when the day is overcast and my courage faints, let me hear Your voice, saying, 'You are my beloved one in whom I am well pleased.'

*Stand at the crossroads and look, ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

*In the name of Christ we stand, and in His name move out across the land in fearfulness and blessing.

*To gather the Kingdom to the King and claim this land for God: a task indeed.

*Give us to see Your will, and power to walk in its path; and lo! the night is routed and gone.

*Lord, hasten the day when those who fear You in ever nation will come form the east and the west, from north and south, and sit at table in Your Kingdom. And, Lord, let Your glory be seen in our land.

*He has shown you, O man, what is right; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?

*Keep me close to You, Lord. Keep me close to You. I lift my hands to You, Lord, I lift them up to You. Hands, Lord, Your gift to us, we stretch them up to You. Always You hold them.

*Help me to find my happiness in my acceptance of what is Your purpose for me: in friendly eyes, in work well done, in quietness born of trust, and, most of all, in the awareness of Your presence in my spirit.

(we add The Gloria to close the prayer together)

Glory be to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, so it is now and so it shall ever be, world without end.

Alleluia. Amen.

I'd love to hear from you.  What prayers and/or Scriptures do you rehearse as you set out on the Beginnings of Things?