In addition to the Lord’s Prayer, which we have been exploring together in worship this month, there is another prayer that has come to mean so much to me that I carried a copy of it on a laminated card in my wallet for many years.

It was composed in the mid-1950s by a Trappist monk named Thomas Merton. It’s often called “The Prayer of Unknowing.” It was published in his book Thoughts in Solitude.

Maybe you know it well; maybe it’s new to you. Either way, I offer this prayer here for you to join with me in praying today:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think that I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always,

though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Amen.