# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 02/Theodore Parker's Prayers/Prayer 20

XX.
JANUARY 10, 1858.
O thou Infinite Perfection, who art the soul of all things that are, we would lift up our spirits and gather up our hearts, and feel thy presence, and have thee as an abiding light in our tabernacle. We would thank thee for all the blessings thou givest us, and thy precious providence whereby we live. We know that thou needest no prayer of ours to stir thee to do us good, but in the midst of things changing and passing away, our heart and our soul cry out for thee, the ever living and true God. In the moment of our adoration, while we worship thee by our prayer, may we so strengthen ourselves that we shall serve thee all our lives, by a daily work which is full of obedience to thee and trust in thy perfection.
We thank thee for the world of matter whereon we live, wherewith our hands are occupied, and whereby our bodies are builded up and filled with food and furnished with all things needful to enjoy. We thank thee for the calmness of Night, which folds thy children in her arms, and rockest them into peaceful sleep, and when we wake we thank thee that we are still with thee. We bless thee for the heavens over our head, arched with loveliness, and starred with ​ beauty, speaking ever in the poetry of nature the psalm of life which the spheres chant before thee to every listening soul.
We thank thee for this greater and nobler world of spirit wherein we live, whereof we are, whereby we are strengthened, upheld, and blessed. We thank thee for the wondrous powers which thou hast given to man, that thou hast created him for so great an estate, that thou hast enriched him with such noble faculties of mind and conscience and heart and soul, capable of such continual increase of growth and income of inspiration from thyself. We thank thee for the wise mind, for the just conscience, for the loving heart, and the soul which knows thee as thou art, and enters into communion with thy spirit, rejoicing in its blessing from day to day.
We thank thee for noble men whom thou hast raised up in all time, for the great minds who bring thy truth to human consciousness, and thereby make mankind free. We thank thee for good men who do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thee, visiting the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and keeping themselves unspotted from the world, which they feed and bless with occasional charity and ever continuous toil and thought. O Lord, we thank thee for those who love thee with all their understanding and their heart, and, loving thee thus, love also their neighbours as themselves ; who overtake those that wander from the way of truth, who lift up the fallen, who are eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame, and strength and salvation to such as are ready to perish.
We thank thee that while we are brothers and sisters to each other, thou art Father and Mother to us all, and when earthly parents forsake and let us fall, when our own kinsfolk and acquaintance turn from us, thou wilt hold us up and in no wise let us fall.
We remember before thee our daily lives, the duties thou givest us to be done, and we pray thee that we may have manly and womanly strength to do whatsoever our duty requires, and to bear any cross that is laid upon us, how hard and grievous soever to be borne. We remember before thee the joys thou givest us, and we pray thee that while our own heart is filled with gratitude to thee for the blessings which our hands have wrought, or have ​ fallen as an inheritance to our lot, we may run over with loving-kindness and tender mercy to our fellow-men.
O Lord, we remember the sorrows with which thou triest us, which make our eyes run down with tears, and we pray thee that there may be in us such serenity of trust in thy providence that every tear shall be changed to a far-prospecting glass, whereby distant glories shall be brought near, and things seemingly small shine out in their real grandeur before our eyes, and ourselves be comforted even by the affliction thou givest us, and grow strong by what else would weaken heart and soul.