God of the past, the present and the future,

we thank you that you love us

faithfully and uniquely.

You loved us

before we knew anything about you:

you care for us in every moment of our lives;

you know our deepest thoughts,

our highest hopes

and our greatest fears:

you know the best and the worst in us,

and still you love us.

Image for World Day of Prayer 2022

This is the first part of a prayer which, today, will be prayed all over the globe as Christians gather for this year’s World Day of Prayer. (If you hadn’t already planned to take part, there’s probably a church near you holding the specially written service where you’d be very welcome.) The theme this year is “I know the plans I have for you” (Jer 29.11). 

The prayer above picks up this idea of God’s deep and complete knowledge of us by drawing explicitly on some key ideas from Psalm 139: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me,” that psalm begins, “you discern my thoughts from afar.” There need be no fear or pretence in this relationship – we are known through and through. And still treasured.

Regarding the past, it was God “who knit me together in my mother’s womb” (v13). As regards the present, “Where can I flee from your presence?” (v7) - God is with us come what may for “darkness is as light to you” (v12). And the future? “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me when none of them as yet existed” (v16).

The contemporary composer Bernadette Farrell has fashioned a lovely hymn from this psalm. Listen below! Today’s prayer, Farrell’s hymn and the psalm on which they both draw all underline with wonderment that from conception onwards, God is inescapably, unconditionally with us.