Prayer for Home and Family

Lord, behold our family assembled here. We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded to us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth.

Let peace abound in our small company. Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Offenders ourselves, give us the grace to accept and forgive offenders. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others.

Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our endeavors. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another.

As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind, as the children of their sire, we beseech of Thee for this help and mercy for Christ's sake. Amen.

~Robert Louis Stevenson

Do you admire the heroes of Treasure Island and Kidnapped? You should do so all the more after reading the above prayer, because the strong character to admire in young Jim Hawkins and David Balfour were created by a man of prayer and action. This is truly great literature in the hands of any boy or girl.

On Ethan's second birthday