A Prayer for the Second Week of Lent

From Prayers For the Christian Year by William Barclay

O God, our Father, you have shown us in the works and words of Jesus Christ, your Son, that you care for both our bodies and our souls. Protect us alike in body and in soul.

We pray for your blessing on our bodies,
Health for our days work;
Wisdom to seek the doctor's skill, if we know, or even suspect that anything is wrong;
Wisdom neither to overdrive our bodies until we exhaust them, nor to allow them to grow weak and flabby with too much ease;
Wise discipline in our habits, that we may allow ourselves no indulgences nor become the victim of any habits which would injure our health:
Grant this, O God.

And since we know that mind and body are linked inseperably together, grant us a sound mind:
A mind at rest and at peace;
A mind undistressed by worry, and free from anxiety;
A mind cleansed and purified from every evil, every bitter and every resentful thought;
A mind determined to do all it can, and then content to leave the rest to you:
Grant this, O God.

We pray for your blessing on our souls.
From being so immeresed in the world that we forget we have a soul;
From being so busy with the things which are seen and temporal that we entirely forget the things which are unseen and eternal;
From forgetting that it does not profit us if we gain the whole world if in doing so we lose our own soul;
Save us, O God.

From the temptations which attack our soul inside and from outside;
From all habits and practices and ways of life which make our soul less sensitive to you;
From all that makes our sould less fit to enter into your presence when this life ends:
Defend us, O God.

Bless us in body, soul and spirit that we may live this life well, and at the end of it enter into life eternal;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.