A Prayer for our Bodies

A Prayer for Our Bodies S.P.Taylor, 23 July 2008

Creator God, we come before you as the work of your own hands,
Acknowledging that we are created a little less than the angels
While also being as the dust that the wind drives away.
We are children of Eve and Adam, those who know life in fleshly bodies;
A flesh you inhabited in Jesus the Christ – and redeemed.
Receive, O gracious God, these our prayers for our bodies.

We pray for our legs and feet, our transports in life.
The first to know the pain of fatigue, and, the joy of dancing,
With over two million steps in a life of eighty years
Carrying us astray down the way called Broad,
Or guiding us in the pathways of righteousness and justice,
Our feet need the washing and anointing of your Spirit.

We pray for our shoulders and backs,
That bear the weight of toil, and the burdens of stress,
Sometimes simply because we refuse to be yoked to you.
Strengthen our backs to bear one another’s burdens,
Straighten our spines with courage, to stand for truth,
and make us limber, to bend without breaking in times of trial.

We pray for our arms and hands, which express our nature
as much as our eyes and mouth. With them we demonstrate
our strength, our compassion, our anger, our skills,
our gratitude, and our love. Teach us to use them wisely.
And may our hands, those marvels of intricate nerves, tendons,
muscles, and movement, serve as your hands to those in need.

We pray for our senses, our portals to the world you have given us.
Keep our senses sharp, and shape them to serve your good will.
As followers of Christ, allow us to smell the rich fragrance of forgiveness,
Taste both the sweet and bitter of life, see your presence in all we meet,
Hear peals of laughter as well as the cry of the brokenhearted, and
Touch with tenderness those whom the world labels untouchable.

We pray for our hidden and unseemly parts, and especially
For those bodily experiences that have caused us to feel undue shame.
You knew each of us as we were being formed in our mother’s womb,
and nothing in us or about us is outside the goodness of your creative will.
Tame that part of us that is most often sharp and unruly, the tongue.
Bring all parts of our flesh under your control.

We pray for our hearts and minds, centers of life and thought;
Both of which too easily become congested and overloaded.
By the power of your Spirit, cleanse our hearts and purify our minds.
Pace the beat of our hearts in unison with your great heart of love.
Guard our minds to think on those things that are honorable,
True, excellent, pure, praiseworthy, and pleasing in your sight.

We pray for those parts of our bodies that are tired and worn.
We seek your grace for those parts that are broken, or deformed.
As we struggle to ward off the effects of age and disease, we look to you
For healing glimpses of the bodies of glory not yet to be seen, while
Confessing our firm faith that if this earthly house we live in is destroyed
We have a building from God, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Help us, O God, to love all our parts as you have given them,
And to live in bodily peace, in a world that idolizes bodily beauty.
Sanctify each person’s self-image, that we may not think too highly,
or too lightly, of the precious bodies you have made us for this life.
So that we may glorify and worship you in body and in spirit,
Living in every way unto you, the Giver of all good gifts. Amen.