A congregational prayer based on time
Almighty God, We pray today for all who are
hard put to come to terms with time:
the young, for whom time seems to go so slowly;
the middle-aged who find themselves with too little
time to do all the things they wish;
the elderly, who mourn the irreversibility of
time and live with a frantic sense that almost
all the sand has dropped.
We pray for those who can only think to "kill time;
those with vengeance in their hearts, who are
carefully biding time;
those who are immobilized by indecision, and
nervously mark time;
those in penal institutions, who are doing time;
those who will not age gracefully, and spend
much wealth and energy resisting
time;
those who cannot reconcile the eternal Christ
to the tragedies and ambiguities
of time.
O Thou who has set eternity in our hearts, yet given
us to live by clocks and calendars, help us to see our
years as hallowed trust and Thy kingdom and its
righteousness as the end toward which we move.
In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray.