Thursday Morning Prayer

Dear Father in Heaven, Thank you for the blessings of this day, of this week, of this year and the years preceding it. I'm grateful for the beauty of this week's snowfall, and I'm so thankful that I regained my balance so many times when I slipped and almost fell. Was it me alone? Did I have some steadying help from my guardian angel? Thank you, however you delivered the miracle, that I did not fall. Thank you for our planet, our country, our lives and fortunes. I'm grateful for the moments of optimism I felt as I watched the State of the Union and listened to the State of the State addresses. I'm grateful that I have been able to work, worship, write, read, rest, laugh, eat, sleep, dream, shower, shave, breathe, move, walk, sit, feel, love, mourn, pray and plan this week. I pray that I will continue to live life in thanksgiving. Thank you for the wonderful family, friends, associates, neighbors, citizens, activists, leaders, writers, programmers, singers, musicians, artists, strangers and all of those unseen contributors and laborers who touch my life each day. Please continue to bless them, please continue to bless me that I might not take them for granted. Bless this planet, your planet, our planet this day. Bless all of us here that we may comfort those who die, rejoice for those who are born, and help all of us who live that we might be grateful for our lives, but see beyond ourselves to those we love, those who love us, those we find easy to love and those who are not so easy to love, but need love, need a smile, need a hug, need our blood, our company, our expertise, our substance, our encouragement, our creativity this day. May we contribute what what we can with gratitude for what we have, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.