Morning & Evening Prayer — Joy | Thursday, April 30, 2026

God of every good gift, we come to you this morning with grateful hearts, stepping into this new day as an offering returned to its Maker.
Thank you for the simple miracle of waking — for breath, for light, for the quiet promise that this day holds something worth receiving.

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Morning Prayer
God of every good gift, we come to you this morning with grateful hearts, stepping into this new day as an offering returned to its Maker. Thank you for the simple miracle of waking — for breath, for light, for the quiet promise that this day holds something worth receiving. We do not take it for granted. We receive it with open hands.
As we move into the hours ahead, fill us with a joy that does not depend on circumstances — the kind that runs deeper than a good morning or a smooth schedule. Let your joy rise up in us like a current beneath the surface, steady and sure, even when the day grows complicated. May it shape the way we speak, the way we work, and the way we treat the people around us. Let others catch a glimpse of something real in us today.
Evening Prayer
Lord, as this day closes and the quiet settles in, we return to you everything we carried — the wins, the worries, the moments that surprised us, and the ones that wore us down. Thank you for being present through all of it. Even in the hours that felt heavy, there were small graces tucked inside — and we choose to notice them now.
We rest tonight in the truth that your joy is not something we have to manufacture or maintain on our own. It is yours, and you share it freely with us. Let it follow us into sleep, and meet us again when morning comes. We are grateful, and we are yours.
A Word of Reflection
Joy is often mistaken for happiness — something that comes and goes with the weather of our lives. But the joy the Scripture speaks of is far more resilient than that. It is rooted not in what is happening around us, but in who holds us. As the ancient text reminds us, "The joy of the Lord is your strength" (Nehemiah 8:10). That strength is not earned through striving — it is received through trust. When we allow God's joy to anchor us, we find that even ordinary days carry an extraordinary grace, and even difficult ones cannot take from us what has already been freely given.