A Prayer in Preparation for Your Dying

What a strange prayer, you might say. Who ever thinks about their dying, much less praying about it?

Right you are. But with the present pandemic and its pictures of mass graves around the world, people are thinking more about “it,” even if they don’t personalize it.

But Matthew Henry leads us in a prayer in preparation for our dying. Bold and blunt, blunt and bold, it may do us all some good. Let’s join hands together across the continents and centuries as we pray this personal and profound prayer to be offered at the end of the day.

Since we are now one day nearer our end,
enable us to carefully calculate the days remaining to us,
so a heart filled with wisdom may direct our lives.

As we remove our clothing at the end of the day and go to sleep in our beds,
let us be reminded that very soon we will be putting off the body
and sleeping the sleep of death.

Since we will soon be making our bed in the darkness of death,
let us daily die to self in anticipation of that final death.

Prepare us for the change that must occur, so that when death actually comes,
it will hold no surprises for us.

Let death’s arrival not terrify us.
Instead, let us calmly put off the body and commit our spirit to you,
knowing very well the One we have trusted.

Matthew Henry, A Way to Pray, page 333.