Psalm 1 (NRSV)
1 Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.

Lord,

I attended the funeral of a man who has fought cancer for a long time. Finally, the cancer won. In the end, his body could not process food and he starved to death. Thankfully, he was in the tender care of a hospice program and did not feel the pain of starvation. But he looked it. He looked like a resident of a Nazi concentration camp; emaciation of the worst sort.
He prayed for a miracle. He wanted to live. O how he wanted to live! His life was prolonged for a while but in the end, he did not live, not in this world and that was his prayer and the prayers of all who loved him. You do not, it seems, always deliver up miracles to order. Why some and not others, I do not know but we have here a prayer for a miracle that was not answered in the way most wanted.
I have to tell you Lord, that as I watched him and as I watched his mother, I was those who are “like trees, planted by streams of water.” Faith that generates courage and strength sufficient for the time, I saw it and I heard it and I am grateful to you for the testimony.
It seems that his suffering became the occasion in which he came to know You more completely and trust you more firmly. He was not delivered from the suffering but he was delivered through the suffering or in the midst of the suffering. He was delivered from a sense of your distance into an awareness of your nearness.
Lord, Jesus invited us to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” I do not want to go through his kind of suffering. I did not want him to go through it. But Lord, I do pray for the faith that creates the kind of courage that is needed for the struggles of my own life.
Grant me wisdom to walk the path that takes me to the streams that nurture the grace that I need.

List those for whom you are praying:

Give thanks to God for at least 5 things in your life.

AMEN

4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
[1]

[1] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989