Prayer for the Arrival of Illness
Today’s prayer comes from the book “To Bless the Space Between Us” by John O’Donohue. I chose to use the blessing “For a Friend on the Arrival of Illness” for today’s prayer. I recently shared this prayer with a friend who received a cancer diagnosis. But this prayer can be used for any illness. I suggest you bookmark this blessing or print it out so that if you need to share its words with a friend, you can access it easily.
Now is the time of dark invitation
Beyond a frontier you did not expect
Abruptly, your old life seems distant.
You barely noticed how each day opened
A path through fields never questioned,
Yet expected, deep down, to hold treasure.
Now your time on earth becomes full of threat;
Before your eyes your future shrinks
You lived absorbed in the day-to-day,
So continuous with everything around you,
That you could forget you were separate;
Now this dark companion has come between you.
Distances have opened your eyes.
You feel that against you will
A stranger has married your heart.
Nothing before has made you
Feel so isolated and lost.
When the reverberations of shock subside in you,
May grace come to restore you to balance.
May it shape a new space in your heart.
To embrace this illness as a teacher
Who has come to open your life to new worlds.
May you find it in yourself
A courageous hospitality
Toward what is difficult,
Painful, and unknown
May you learn to use this illness
As a lantern to illuminate
The new qualities that will emerge in you.
May the fragile harvesting of this slow light
Help to release whatever has become false in you.
May you trust this light to clear a path
Through all the fog of old unease and anxiety
Until you feel arising within you a tranquility
Profound enough to call the storm to stillness.
May you find the wisdom to listen to your illness:
Ask it why it came. Why it chose your friendship.
Where it wants to take you. What it wants you to know.
What quality of space it wants to create in you.
What you need to learn to become more fully yourself.
That you presence may shine in the world.
May you keep faith with your body,
Learning to see it as a holy sanctuary
Which can bring this night-wound gradually
Towards the healing and freedom of dawn.
May you be granted the courage of vision
To work through your passivity and self-pity,
To see the beauty you can harvest
From the riches of this dark invitation.
May you learn to receive it graciously,
And promise to learn swiftly.
That it may leave you newborn,
Willing to dedicate your time to birth.
Kristen Koger, Pastor for Children and Families, First Baptist Church Decatur