End Your Day with Prayer

Typically, how do you end your day? Do you groan yourself out of fan overstuffed chair, or of a coach, act a hours of staring at a television screen? Do you drag yourself home at 9 or 10 p.m after long, long hours at your job that doesn’t make you  happy but pays the bills or maintains a pretty darned affluent lifestyle? Or that doesn’t make you happy and doesn’t pay the bills? Do you stumble into bed after the daily hassle of getting the kids off to bed? Or what?

          Regardless of how your day ends, do you end your day, or does your day end you? You can end your day happy if you bring it to a close with a few minutes of quiet prayer. No matter what kind of work you do, no matter how you spent your time during the day, and no matter how you spend the last few hours before you crawl between the sheets, you can rekindle quiet happiness by ending your day with prayer. You can. If you choose to you can.

          This day, this day that is over now, has been a day filled with the ordinary. What did you do? Days are filled with the consequences of the choices we made, the consequences of choices others made for us, and the consequences of cheer happenstance. All these things give us the day we had today. There it is… or, rather, there it was. It’s over now.

          Here is a wild idea. Before you sink into sleep, pause for a moment and ask yourself about the day you just had. How do you feel about it? Be aware of how you feel about it. Right down to your toes, how do you feel about the day you had? Now. While you brush your teeth, or while you get into your nightgown or pajamas, or as you tuck yourself into bed say a prayer: “One with you, Lord, in all things, at all times, in all the places. Amen.”

          The toothpaste is a foaming I your mouth as you scrub away at your molars and incisors. Pray whatever is in your heart? Pulling off your shoes and shocks, pray. Performing all of your bed time rituals, pray. My feet are killing me/ my eyes are tired. My back is sore. It’s been a good day, a satisfying day__or maybe not so good and not so satisfying__and I’m tired. This is the kind of day it has been, Lord __ and this is how I feel about it. Just touching bases, just turning my heart to you. Just coming home, bringing myself to you. Love at the heart of the universe.

          Some find it happier to use a rote prayer, a memorized prayer, a prayer that comes trippingly to the tongue that requires not so much thought, something with some poetry to it, some built-in structure and beauty. “Let my evening prayer ascend before you, O Lord. And let your loving kindness descend upon us.” Some people like to use a prayer book, a collection of prayers to read from. You could do worse at the end of the day when you’re tired and you want to be happy.