God, Creator of the Universe, I thank you for this day.
Thank you for coffee, for sweet cream, for a quiet morning, and for speaking to me through books, words, and other people.
Thank you for Brown Thrashers, Cardinals, Blue Jays, and for small gray birds that fly away before I can get binoculars to get a better look.
Thank you for rivers, coves, and creeks, and for time to paddle out on them. Thank you for showing me beauty that I can’t get to by land. Thank you for for the warmth of the sun, for breezes, for currents and tides to battle, ride, and surf. Thank you for sand bars, beaches, and driftwood.
Thank you for showing me new things on waters where I’ve spent 46 years exploring. Thank you for hidden coves, fish jumping, families trotlining, and Great Blue and Green Herons, who must swear at my scaring them, but I love seeing them fly and settle again further down.
Thank you for allowing m
y mind to see my life reflected in a 6-mile paddle–for memories and mistakes, for joy and love and dreams, for connection to place and to You and Your creation. Thank you for not giving up on me when I was distant from you. Thank you for ears to hear your voice.
Help me remember this feeling of connection when loneliness comes. Help me find direction and purpose when I get lost.
Help me find the right words, the right actions, the right heart as a father, son, brother, friend, and whatever other names I wear.
Please be with the broken, the hurting, the confused, the lost. Give them peace, help them find their purpose, and know Your love. Thank you for the words of Bob Goff, who wrote, “It has always seemed to me that broken things, just like broken people, get used more; it’s probably because God has more pieces to work with.” Please take us in our brokenness and use us to help each other, to paint the picture, to make the world You would have us make.
Please give us rest. Help us find and know You in quiet, in down time, in play. Help us recharge and re-create ourselves, so that we can find, and know, and do the work You have given us to do.
Father God, I don’t have a map, a script, or a clue how You do things. And I probably wouldn’t do a great job with it if I did. There are so many things that I don’t understand.
But I know the greatest blessings and wisdom and love I have known, have come when I listen, when I’m open, when I show up, and say, “Here I am.”