I don’t know about you, but one of the things that captures my heart about the TV series The Chosen is the simple morning and evening prayers Jesus and his disciples offer consistently.
In the morning, they say something along the lines of, “Thank you, living and enduring King, for you have mercifully restored my soul within me. Great is your faithfulness.” And when they prepare for sleep, they offer something like, “Blessed are you, Lord our God and King of the Universe, who brings sleep to my eyes and slumber to my eyelids. May it be your will, O Lord and God of my ancestors, that I lie down in peace and arise in peace.”
Both are traditional Jewish prayers—a variation of the Modeh Ani in the morning and the Shema in the evening—and remind me a bit of the simple prayer I was taught to pray as a little girl: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, may angels watch me in the night, and keep me in thy blessed sight. Amen.”
The beautiful thing about authentic Christianity is there is no single perfectly correct way to pray. We know the Lord urges us to “rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIV), and prayer can look different for everyone.
Still, some mornings and nights are harder than others. Perhaps we are grieving, depressed, or exhausted, and praying feels incredibly hard. Or perhaps we crave a little guidance on what to say as we discover our own unique manner of authentic prayer.
If that’s what you’re seeking, I offer a collection of four morning and four evening prayers to help you on your personal journey.
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