Blessed Be the Works of Your Hands

This prayer for God’s blessing includes a wealth of human experience. We recognize how these activities require God’s blessing that often comes in the form of courage to be able to do these challenging things. One way of understanding praying without ceasing could be having a routine of asking God’s blessing on all our hands do all day long.

Blessed be the works of your hands,
O Holy One.

Blessed be these hands that have touched life.
Blessed be these hands that have nurtured creativity.
Blessed be these hands that have held pain.
Blessed be these hands that have embraced with passion.
Blessed be these hands that have tended gardens.
Blessed be these hands that have closed in anger.
Blessed be these hands that have planted new seeds.
Blessed be these hands that have harvested ripe fields.
Blessed be these hands that have cleaned, washed, mopped, scrubbed.
Blessed be these hands that have become knotty with age.
Blessed be these hands that are wrinkled and scarred from doing justice.
Blessed be these hands that have reached out and been received.
Blessed be these hands that hold the promise of the future.

Blessed be the works of your hands,
O Holy One.

By Diann Neu, co-founder of WATER. From Earth Prayers, p. 205