Prayer time 17 June 2026
The will to be found
… and yet …
Download a PDF of the prayer script
Orientation
Welcome. It's lovely to see you all here, wherever tonight has found you.
Some of you have been wrestling with prayers that have gone on long enough that you have stopped expecting them to lift or change, and here you are again. That matters. Our prayers make a difference not just in the lives of those for whom we pray, but within us. Right where we are, God is. Before a word is on our lips, it is known.
Over the past few weeks we have been paying close attention to how we actually receive God. We have prayed about listening, and how the ear God opens in us gets turned toward the people around us. We have prayed about seeing — the imagination as the faculty that holds the true picture when the outer picture is unclear. Last week we prayed about the senses, the body in the room as the place where the encounter happens.
Tonight the arc lands on the will.
Listening, seeing, sensing. All of it is receiving. The will is what we do with what we have received. And the act available to many of us right now is not a grand one. It is the smallest possible thing. A turning. I am here. Find me. Use me.
Scripture calls us to that choice again and again. Choose this day whom you will serve. (Joshua 24:15) It doesn't have to be dramatic. Just turn.
[Silence — one breath]
Let us pray.
Relaxation
We'll take a moment to relax and settle where we are. As we pray tonight, we are not here to strive or struggle or be anxious. We are here to remember. So let everything else go for now.
Most of us have been holding ourselves together all day. Our public face, our composure, the worry held just far enough back to keep functioning. You can put that down now.
From the top of your head, let your brow soften. Unclench your jaw. You probably didn't notice it was clenched. Relax your neck, your throat, your shoulders. Let them drop. Breathe in slowly, and as you breathe out, let your chest expand and slow.
Let the weight move down your arms. Your elbows become heavy. Your forearms, your wrists, your hands. Let your hands fall open. Take your attention all the way to the tips of your fingers and let them rest.
Sweep down through the body. Your hips, the large muscles of your legs, your knees, your calves, your ankles. All the small bones of your feet, the arch, the heel. Splay your toes and then let them go.
[Silence]
Breathe again.
When you sit this still, thoughts come flooding in. The unfinished things, the unanswered things, the ideas that have been waiting for a quiet moment. Don't chase them and don't fight them. Trust that what needs you will find you again at the right time. Right now, we are here to pray.
Emilie Cady wrote in Lessons in Truth that God is not a being far off in the heavens, but the life and intelligence within every created thing. Scripture says the same thing in plain language. Genesis 2:7: God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. The life within you, right now, breathing with you, is that same breath. You didn't go anywhere to find it.
God is already here. The only question is whether we're paying attention.
[Pause]
Concentration
Kobayashi Issa was a Buddhist monk. He wrote this after the death of his daughter.
And he still wrote:
This world of dew
is only a world of dew —
and yet... and yet.
Kobayashi Issa, c.1819, trans. Stephen Addiss.
And yet. And yet.
Bring to mind the people you are praying for. Don't name them. Just see them.
If you are in financial pressure right now, and yet.
If you are being hit with one thing after another and cannot see the end of it, and yet.
If you are watching someone you love lose their health, already shouldering what comes after, and yet.
If you have reached for the teachings, leaned on the faith of your childhood, and found it has not been enough to pull you through this week, and yet.
The smallest seed of faith says and yet. It is not defeat. It is not insufficient faith. It is the most honest prayer a person can offer when things are genuinely hard.
And so we pray.
God, we bring this to you. No extra polish, no curation, no edits. Exactly as it is tonight.
[Silence]
Psalm 22 begins with a cry: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?
This is not a prayer of doubt. It is a prayer of theology. When God appears absent, when our loved ones appear forsaken, the Psalmist does not pretend otherwise. He holds the cry and the trust in the same breath. He goes straight to God with it. The prayer goes out. Nothing comes back. And he remains.
Verse 24: He has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
What happened between verse 2 and verse 24? It is unexplained, unresolved. And it is holy ground.
[Pause]
Luke's Gospel: The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. (Luke 19:10)
Paul writes in Acts 17:28: In him we live and move and have our being. In you we live and move and have our being, you in us and we in you. The Christ who seeks is not somewhere else looking in. The seeking is happening inside you. The part of you that is stuck, that is exhausted, that is sitting by a sickbed — that part is already being moved toward.
The will to be found is not crossing a distance. It is remembering there is none.
[Pause]
As Thomas Chisholm wrote: Great is thy faithfulness. There is no shadow of turning in thee. So we turn. No straining, no struggling, no striving. Just turning. A breath that is a turning. Your hands open, receiving. The simplest possible act of the will:
I am willing to be found. Right where I am. Right as I am.
[Silence]
Meditation
George Herbert wrote this in 1633. Read it slowly.
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert, ‘Love III,’ 1633.
Romans 8:26: The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
Now we move into silence. No need to hold the poem or the scripture. No need to remember anything. Just listen. I'll bring us back before we close. Our ambient music will hold the space.
[Silence]
Realisation
And now we realise the truth.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me.
Psalm 23:1–4, NRSV.
The shepherd is present in the darkest valley. You are with me. Now. Here.
Paul writes from shipwreck, imprisonment, and exhaustion, and he is certain of this:
Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38–39.
All of it is held in that love. The sickbed, the failing body, the grief not yet arrived, the financial pressure, the cumulative blows. All of it held, and nothing in all creation separates.
Emmet Fox wrote:
God is with you always, closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. Whatever your need, God is there.
[Denial/Affirmation pairs — spoken slowly, with silence between each]
I release the thought that I must find my way to God.
I affirm that the Christ in me is already moving toward the part of me that feels lost. I am already being found.
I release the thought that my circumstances must improve before I can pray.
I affirm that the will to be found can be prayed from exactly where I am, including the dark.
I release the thought that silence means absence.
I affirm that the Seeker has not stopped. The seeking is happening within me, even now.
I release the sense that I am alone in what I am watching and shouldering.
I affirm that the Spirit intercedes with groans that words cannot express. Those I love are held by a love that does not require my words to reach them.
I release the thought that the will to turn toward God requires strength I do not have tonight.
I affirm that the turning is the smallest possible thing. A breath. An open hand. That is enough.
I release the thought that God is waiting for me to arrive in a better state.
I affirm that the life breathing in me right now is God's own breath. I am already inside it.
I release the thought that the valley disqualifies my prayer.
I affirm that even here, you are with me. The shepherd does not wait at the edge. He is present in it.
We affirm together:
I am willing to be found.
Christ in me, the hope of glory, is seeking the lost part of me, and will not stop.
I bring what is real tonight, not what ought to be real.
The will that turns toward God is itself a prayer. I turn now.
I am not outside the love of God, and I never have been.
You are with me in the darkest valley, right now.
Nothing in all creation separates me or those I love from this love.
In God I live and move and have my being, and the seeking is already underway.
My will is pointed toward God, and that is the whole prayer.
The life within me is God's own breath.
We came with and yet, and yet. This is what we found.
THIS TURNING OF THE WILL TOWARD GOD IS THE PRAYER. IT ALWAYS WAS.
[Silence]
Appreciation
Lord, we give you thanks.
Thank you that a breath is enough. That an open hand is enough. That you were already moving toward us before we turned.
Thank you that you heard everything in this room tonight. All of it.
Thank you that the Spirit prayed in us when we had no words. That you are closer than breathing. That you were already here.
Thank you for the and yet. It was the truest prayer here tonight, and you received it.
We go from here with our will pointed toward you.
Go. You are being found.
The light of God surrounds us.
The love of God enfolds us.
The power of God protects us.
The presence of God watches over us.
Wherever we are, God is.
James Dillet Freeman, Prayer of Protection, 1947.
Tihei mauri ora.
Prepared by Jacinda Faloon-Cavander for Unity of NZ