Bless these bones

Recently I’ve been studying Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” from the Gospel of Matthew. It includes this teaching on prayer:

Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened.
(Matthew 7:7)

I wrote the following prayer based on the three verbs in Jesus’ teaching:

Prayer on Growing Older

I ask on behalf of my body.

I know I’m growing older and I don’t ask for a reversal of that process,
but I would like to become a healthy old lady, one who still hikes and swims and circumnavigates her world with appropriate energy and joy, who handles the inevitable physical limitations and changes with grace.

I seek friendship in these autumn years.

Just as the trees turn gold, so let the gift of friendship grow richer and more beautiful, with my husband of so many years, with my grown children and their spouses, with my grandchildren and those greats yet to come, with my neighbors, and with friends from years past.
Help me to delight in them all and be a joy to them in turn. I seek warm conversation, laughter, intimacy, mutual adventures, and shared silences.
I seek opportunities to love my neighbor as I love myself.

Above all, I seek a deepening friendship with you, my Lord.

I knock on the door of wisdom.

I know that growing older does not automatically mean growing wiser which is why I’m knocking.
Help me approach the mysteries with awe and joy.
Open my eyes and let me see.
Open my ears and help me to listen.
Give me hope that one day the door I knock on will open wide and invite me out into a new place where I shall know, even as also I am known.

I thank you for this time of life.
And I ask, I seek, I knock.
Amen. So let it be.