Plant Us by the Water

Lord God, you are the one who plants and the one who waters. We come to you at the beginning of this day admitting that we have often walked in step with counsel that does not know you, lingered where we should have kept moving, and settled into seats that were never ours. Forgive us. Lift us out of the drift.

Give us delight in your word. Not duty alone, though we will obey, but real delight, the kind that returns to a page because it is hungry. Teach us to meditate, to murmur your instruction to ourselves in the car and at the sink and in the dark when sleep will not come.

Plant us by streams of water. Make our leaves green through the dry weeks, and bring fruit in its season, in your time and not ours. Keep us from becoming chaff, light and hollow and blown wherever the day's wind decides.

You know the way of the righteous. Watch over ours today. Through Jesus Christ, the truly blessed one, who walked the way of life all the way to the end for us. Amen.