God of this day. God of sunrise and rainstorm, God of sanctuary and living room, we praise you. We praise you, even in the impossibility and struggle, for we know you are there when the days are long, and the nights are hard, and intensity is on the rise. You are there when we feel abandoned. You are there, inescapable, even in the darkest of moments. You carry our discontent. We know this because we recognize you—Risen Christ—by your woundedness. When we nurse our own wounds, we know we can trust your presence. We worship a God with scars, so we know you can hold our sorrow. Be our wounded healer when illness draws round, when the pain and ache of fever or heartbreak or loss defeats us. Be our wounded healer, O Christ.

And as we continue to find our way through this season of our lives, we ask that you—Risen Christ—might make yourself known in our households, ill prepared for your presence that they might be. Be with us in the place where we gather in the intimacy of family, the tenderness of tables filled with soup and bread, cereal and toast. Show up in the places where we are ill prepared for hope, where we want to shrug off peace or push away tenderness.

Do not abandon us. Do not leave us alone, O God. Shelter us in times of hardship. Carry us even on the risky path. Let your light shine in the darkness so that we might see you face-to-face. No matter how ugly, exhausting, unexpectedly disrupted our lives become, be our peace that passes all understanding, be our calm and safety, our anchor and our rock. Be with us, O God and hear us as we pray together the prayer Jesus teaches us saying:

Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory,
forever. Amen.