A prayer for dedication

Prayer for the week *

Lord Jesus,
            I give thee my hands to do thy work.
            I give thee my feet to go thy way. 
            I give thee my eyes to see as thou seest.   
            I give thee my tongue to speak thy words.
            I give thee my mind that thou mayest think in me.  
            I give thee my spirit that thou mayest pray in me.
            Above all, I give thee my heart that you mayest love in me 
              thy Father, and all mankind.
            I give thee my whole self that thou mayest grow in me,
            so that it is thee, Lord Jesus, who live and pray in me.
            I hand over to thy care, Lord, my soul and body,   
            my prayers and my hopes, my health and my work,
            my life and my death, my parents and my family,
            my friends and my neighbours, my country and all men.    
            Today and always.  Amen

                                     Adaptation of a prayer by Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626)

A shortened version of this prayer, with the language modernized, can be found on prayer cards in Christian bookshops, often unattributed.  It is an adaptation of a prayer by Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester in 17^th century and one of the contributors to the King James Version of the Bible.

There are similarities with the often quoted words of the 16^th century mystic, Teresa of Avila, about Christ having no hands but our hands, no feet but our feet, but it seems to come at it from a different angle.  To today’s ears it is easy to be drawn to conspire with a secular world view that would shut God out and make God completely separate from his world.  This changes the original meaning of her words.  God is not to be limited to our feeble efforts.  The God who creates and recreates through his Spirit has the ability to work in ways we know nothing of.

The prayer of dedication therefore provides something of an antidote.  It balances the equation in a more helpful way for our minds.  It shifts the focus from us ‘indispensable’ human beings, without whom God can do nothing, to the God whom we seek to serve and without whom we can do nothing.  Our hands, our feet, our eyes, our tongue, even our heart, are only any use to God when we offer them in his service and in so offering them we can be part of furthering God’s kingdom of justice and mercy.  We are vessels to be filled, instruments or tools to be wielded, mouth-pieces to give voice to the deep sigh at the heart of creation.

The prayer holds the aspect of our doing God’s work in the world in terms of our co-creating with God.  While God can do anything, he seems to choose to work through natural processes and through inspiring men and women to seek his kingdom; through capturing hearts and minds.  We dedicate ourselves in his service.  This prayer comes at the world from the sacramental angle, which affirms in Rowan Williams’ phrase that “the world is alive with God”.  We work in harmony with that presence and activity.

It goes further, though, than just working in harmony with God.  It prays that God will inbreathe a love into us that extends to the whole of creation.  It prays that our hearts will be changed by this profligate loving and through that spill out to all that loving touches and more, leave no one untouched by it.

This prayer is a remedy to the tendency to be drawn into an excessively secular world view that would shut God out of his world and live as though he is absent.  It declares that this is God’s world and we exist within God; God is the very context in which we are anything at all.

The second part of the prayer, often omitted in the modernized versions, talks about giving God ‘my mind that thou mayest think in me’; ‘my spirit that thou mayest pray in me’; ‘my whole self that thou mayest grow in me’.  It conveys a total submission to God’s providence and care; a total trust in his purposes.  These lines emphasise even more powerfully the being touched by the life and love of God, the God who reaches out and refuses to keep the distance secularity so declares.

© Ian Black 2006

* An edited version of this reflection was published in the Prayer for the Week column in the Church Times on 15^th December 2006