A prayer awareness exercise for anxiety

Father, lover of all your creation, open me to your love. Jesus, knowing the joys and sorrows of a human life, walk with me. Holy Spirit, giver of gifts, fill me, empower me, use me, even in my brokenness.

Am I anxious? How does my anxiety reveal itself? . . . . . Where in my body do I carry it? . . . . . Is there a clear cause? . . . . . Is it more a floating anxiety, without a clear cause? . . . . . Has anxiety become a habit with me? . . . . . Might it have a name?


The same Jesus who calmed the storm, cast out demons and conquered death, tells us not to worry or be anxious. Do I experience this as a comfort or a judgement of my own anxiety? I can talk to Jesus about this later. For now, I focus on a selection of verses from Jesus to relieve us of our worry, and our need to worry, from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6.

Do not worry about your life;
Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
Do not worry . . . But strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Do not worry about tomorrow . . . Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Enjoying the outdoors, looking for God’s providence in the world, focusing on today, working for the Kingdom of love and justice . . . . . is Jesus suggesting some strategies to help me with my anxiety here? I consider this for a while . . . . .

Father, Son, Spirit, you know me through and through; you love me as I am; you touch my life with healing; you call me to bear fruit. I give my wounded self to you, to be a channel of healing to others, to be a wounded healer, with Christ, who died, and rose, and comes again. Amen.