God,
We dare to approach you with everything that's swirling around in our minds,
Our racing thoughts,
Our plunging hearts,
The emotions that seem to overwhelm us like billows.
We come before you in a space and a time of being,
Of being unapologetically who we are as your created ones,
Your dear children.
Opening with words from Psalm 16,
Hear now the psalmist beseeching God.
Select me,
O God,
For in you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord,
You are my Lord.
I have no good apart from you.
As for the holy ones in the land,
They are the noble in whom is all my delight.
Those who choose another God multiply their sorrows.
Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips.
The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.
You hold my lot.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.
I have a goodly heritage.
I bless the Lord who gives me counsel.
In the night also my heart instructs me.
I keep the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand.
I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices.
My body also rests secure.
For you do not give me up to Sheol or let your faithful ones see the pit.
You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy.
In your right hand are pleasures forever.
Amen.
Find a comfortable seat where you can rest your hands on your knees,
Where you can gently close your eyes,
Where you can bring to the forefront of your mind the up and the down of your inhale and your exhale.
You can feel the rising of your chest and the falling back to baseline.
Every breath we take is a practice.
A practice of being,
Of sensing,
Of heightening our awareness of the fact that we are alive.
God is the giver of this breath.
God also is the one we leave our breath to go home to.
What an absolute blessing that we get the gift of every breath we take in our lifetime.
And what a gift that we trust in confidence that none of those breaths are wasted,
Particularly not the last.
Nothing in your world,
God,
Is wasted.
As we focus now on our grounding breaths and the quieting of our minds,
Let us not judge how we sit in this space or how we feel in the moment or what we bring to you.
Help us know that we are loved all the way.
You are the alpha and the omega,
The beginning and the end.
There is nothing for us to despise about the humanness of our life.
Even when it brings pain,
It is pain that God,
You know.
So as we sit with these breaths,
Remind us you never leave us.
Remind us that we return to your good gracious arms.
We were there in the beginning and we will be there in the end.
Every breath is a gift.
God,
You are our refuge and you can take it all.
You are the place that we go to shelter,
To hunker down for the hard places,
The hard moments,
The hard feelings,
The hard sensations in our life.
You can handle our grief,
Our sorrow,
Our anger,
Our jealousy,
Our rage,
Our doubt.
God,
You are our rock and our redeemer.
No matter what we go through,
We give you all that we are.
Come back now to your breath.
Refocus your awareness on the in and the out,
The up and the down,
The beginning and the end.
Lord,
In your mercy,
Hold us as we are,
As we take this breath and the next.
Be with us as you have promised.
Amen.
