You Are With Us

Good Shepherd, you are ours, and because you are ours we lack nothing that we truly need. Teach us to believe that today, when the list of what we are missing feels long.

Make us lie down. We are not good at it. Lead us beside quiet waters and restore what the week has taken out of us. Choose our paths for the sake of your own name, so that where we go this day brings you honor and not merely brings us comfort.

Some of us are in the darkest valley now. We name it before you. Be with us there. Let your rod drive back what would harm us and your staff pull us out of the places we have fallen. Turn our talk about you into talk to you.

Set a table for us in front of what frightens us. Anoint our heads. Fill our cups until they run over. Let goodness and love chase us down all the days of our lives, and bring us home at last to your house, where we will dwell with you forever, through Jesus, the shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep. Amen.