I always enjoy finding new prayer resources and, for that reason, was glad to receive a copy of Donald McKim’s new Everyday Prayer with the Puritans. It features prayers from the Puritans accompanied by devotions from McKim. Here is a prayer from Lewis Bayly that stood out to me. Perhaps it can help and guide you as you pray…
O most gracious God and loving Father, who art about my bed and knowest my down-lying and my uprising, and art near unto all that call upon thee in truth and sincerity, I, wretched sinner, do beseech thee to look upon me with the eyes of thy mercy, and not to behold me as I am in myself…
So, I beseech thee, sanctify unto me this night’s rest and sleep, that I may enjoy the same as thy sweet blessing and benefit; that so this dull and wearied body of mine, being refreshed with moderate sleep and rest, I may be the better enabled to walk before thee, doing all such good works as thou hast appointed, when it shall please thee by thy divine power to waken me the next morning.
And whilst I sleep, do thou, O Lord, who art the keeper of Israel, that neither slumberest nor sleepest, watch over me in thy holy providence, to protect me from all dangers, so that neither the evil angels of Satan, nor any wicked enemy, may have any power to do me any harm or evil…
Hasten, O Father, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Make me ever mindful of my last end, and of the reckoning that I am then to make unto thee; and in the meanwhile, careful so to follow Christ in the regeneration during this life, as that with Christ I may have a portion in the resurrection of the just, when this mortal life is ended. These graces, and all other blessings, which thou, O Father, knowest to be requisite and necessary for me, I humbly beg and crave at thy hands, in the name and mediation of Jesus Christ thy Son. Amen.
