A Prayer for Good Work

God you are the one active and alive and working.  We give you thanks for the work you have done and continue to do, creating and sustaining and renewing - for we know now the great cost of inviting us to share your life and love.  We praise you for your work done while incarnate in Jesus - for the daily, mundane work of carpentry, and for how that work dignifies our daily work; and of course we praise you for the work of caring, healing, feeding, and teaching, and for the work of liberating us from sin and death through your suffering.

Give us good work to do.  Give us the patience and skill to do it well.  Give us delight and satisfaction in work done well.

For those of us deciding what kind of work to do, grant us creativity and discernment.

For those of us who feel pulled in too many directions, grant us peace of heart.

For those with promising careers, with dreams of what we want to accomplish, center our work and motivation on serving others.

For those who may need to leave their work, either because they need to rest, or because it is work unbecoming your servants, grant us courage.

For those trapped in jobs they don’t like, grant us new opportunities for better work.

For those who are tired or depressed, renew us and enable us to take delight in your love.

For those tempted to despair, unable to see the meaning in their own work, grant insight and illumination, and encouraging friends.

For those who need to work but are not finding jobs, grant support both emotional and financial, and a renewed economy with enough good work for all.

Forgive us for the many ways that our work is superficial, selfish, short-sighted, and mindless.  Fill us with hope.  Bring to our hearts your lively promise that you will establish the work of our hands.  Help us to imagine a future in which you thresh away the chaff of our work, and enlarge whatever good work we have been able to do.  In Jesus’ name and through the power of the Spirit, we will offer you our best work as we wait for love to conquer all things.  Amen.