A Prayer for the Valley

Occasionally I like to share a prayer from other saints. This one comes from George Matheson, a Scottish pastor and hymn writer, who despite his blindness, wrote and ministered with great fruitfulness. In this prayer we see a reflection of ideas that are born out of the 23rd Psalm as well as the gospel truth of the Christian’s life being united with Christ’s. It is a prayer for someone facing death. While you might be in good health and think it has no relevance to your life today, the truth is none of us know when we will walk through that valley.

In the “Parable of the Rich Fool,” (Luke 12:13-21), God said to the rich man, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

We all live at the entrance to the Valley of the Shadow of Death. This prayer, then, is for us too.”

Let me feel, O Christ, that I am already immortal; that death could no more destroy my life than it could destroy yours, because mine is yours. When the shadows of the grave seem to encompass me, help me to remember, not so much that there is a life above as that there is a life within; help me to remember, not that you are waiting for me across the valley, but that you are waiting with me in the valley; then shall the rod and staff of my comfort be, “You are from everlasting, therefore I shall not die.”

Amen

(My favorite line from the prayers is, “Help me to remember that you are not waiting for me across the valley, but that you are waiting with me in the valley.” I would change it though to “Help me to remember that you are not waiting for me across the valley, but that you are walking with me through the valley.”)