A Prayer for When You Barely Have Time to Eat

Dear Father,

It's been a week. Or two. One for the books. I know you have them all the time, but I'm just me and a human and never more aware of my limitations than after a week—or two—like this. I looked at the calendar this morning—while scheduling yet another meeting—and realized we're nearing the month's end.

February, the shortest month, seems shorter than ever.

The burdens I carry are never mine and this is the lesson of my life I suppose, even the ones that feel like mine aren't mine. I compartmentalize life these days, turning off and turning on from one meeting, one phone call, one conversation to another. I go to bed tired these days, awake too late, awake too early. I have never struggled to fall asleep, but I'm asleep a moment after I close my eyes and I sleep well because I am learning to give my burdens to you as soon as I have picked them up myself.

Father, I remember the words of Jesus to Peter, "To whom much was given, of him much will be required," and sometimes I wonder if I'm asking for it. When I survey the landscape of the life you've given me, it is much rocky soil, thorny ways, and knee-deep mud, and I wonder sometimes, "What fool would knowingly choose this terrain?" I tell a friend the other day that pressing back the darkness means walking first through the darkness. Or groping my way through it is more like it.

I'm grateful for your word these days. I'm living on it like bread more than I ever have before, because, God, I'm hungry. Jesus said his food was to do the will of him who sent him, and that's you, so I eat your words and they taste sweet. Obedience, even cheerful obedience, is hard sometimes, but your word washes it down and I believe you. I trust you.

God, help me to eat life one morsel at a time, to subsist on today's manna, and not try to horde tomorrow's, to manage tomorrow's problems. I trust you to give me what I need, whether is it bread and wine or body and blood or wisdom and peace—I trust you. Jesus, you have the words of eternal life, so I can only pray in your name, Amen.