When the world is hard, there is still hope to be found. Check out Clifton Spangler’s heartfelt prayer and find a daily guide to God’s grace in Rebecca Simon’s Finding God Every Day. Read the prayer below for your strength today.
my god,
I come to you old and frail, with weak knees, red eyes, and my head aching as if stuck in a hole that keeps getting tighter.
I am desperate, Lord. Happiness feels like a faint memory that can be cruelly snatched away, and I beg you now—teach me how to hope.
I have been drifting in the shadows for so long that the light seems like a distant dream. Each step falters, every breath struggling against the pressure of the ground. The desolate days become sleepless nights, and the nights are like interrogation sessions when a cruel and invisible prosecutor taunts me with constant misery. I have tried to hold on, to push forward as the world expects, but I am tired. My hands reach for nothing, my dreams are scattered and shattered like debris after a storm, I don’t know how to collect them. I look around, and all I see is what is gone—doors locked, promises broken, voices silenced. Where am I going now? How can I believe in anything when everything I was carrying has slipped away?
I need you to show me. I need you to reach into this mess that I am and untangle the knots. Hope is a shadow I won’t chase, a word I know but can’t hear, it slips through my fingers like an ethereal gel. Every time I take one step forward, there are harsh realities, and I am taken twenty steps back—a fleeting high that has been crushed by a tremendous fall. Is hope a warmth that I have forgotten? A promise I can hear? The faintest light in my tired eyes?
But here I am still whispering your name, because even my doubts will not turn away from you.
Teach me to trust, God. Show me how I hope I don’t sink into this emotional sand. I see others walking motionless, with their heads held high, and I wonder what they have that I have lost. Do they feel close? Have they found a power that I can’t access? I want that, Lord. I want to rise without this pain in my chest, this fear that tomorrow will be a gray version of today. I want to believe that there is meaning in this hurt, not just a cold end. I want to look at what’s broken and find a way to fix it, not shatter into a million pieces.
Please, God, give me something—small, yet real. A breath touched by comfort, a kind voice from nowhere, a spark within that says, “Go on.” I feel like I’m on a sinking ship, I only plug one hole and see three more open, the water rising faster than I can get it out.
Teach me how to trust when the voices of darkness urge me to stop. Teach me to stand when my strength is weak, to breathe when the air is heavy. Show me that this is not all, that the matter is still waiting outside of my sight. Help me trust your hands when your face is hidden. I want to trust in you—not in things that wither, not in people that go away, but in you. Strengthen my heart, Lord. There was a sound inside. Let me feel you close—warmth in the cold, light in the dark.
I’m desperate, God, but I’m here. I ask. I’m waiting. Teach me to trust, because I can’t find it. I never knew. Take this broken man, these worn out pieces, and shape something new. I don’t know how, but you know. You always have it. Please, teach me to have hope.
