A Prayer With an Open Hand

LORD, we have made our plans. Some of them are good and some of them are only ours. We lay them before you now and ask you to establish the steps, to open the roads that should be open and close the ones that should not.

You weigh our motives, and we confess they do not bear weighing. Our ways seem pure to us and we know they are not. Thank you that through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for, and that the one who sees our reasons has also made a way for us in Christ.

We have spent a week in Proverbs. Let it not be a week of good advice only. Let the fear of you become the beginning of everything we know. Let our tongues learn the gentle answer. Let our hearts be guarded. Let our households buy the truth and never sell it. And let the portrait at the end of the book, a person of strength whose praise comes from fearing you, become a little more true of each of us.

Commit our work to yourself, since we cannot keep it. Work everything out to its proper end. Amen.