Five Minute Friday = Prompt word, five minutes, just write.

No over thinking, no over complicating.

This weeks prompt word: SETTLE

Settle petal

Calm your farm

Just give it a rest.

Now that might be good advise in certain circumstances.

But it’s easier said than done.

We have a way here in Australia of making molehills out of mountains. We fix things with a slap on the back and a “she’ll be right”.

And we fall apart later.

Life can scatter us like the chicken feed I throw across my lawn of a morning. It can have us “all over the shop” as we say here as well, distant from ourselves, further away than our arms can reach.

And a she’ll be right won’t fix it.

And it can get lonely with just the worst of our fears and own self doubt for company

Its no place to be.

No wonder we long for home.

For an anchor, a rock, living water.

No wonder we long for a safe place to settle ourselves, where we can stretch out whole and be at peace.

This simple prayer has been helping me lately, making me sit quiet for a bit , bringing me peace, drawing me from the far flung corners of my own efforts and from the far side of my worn thin emotions. Maybe you could use this prayer too

You may know it already. I came across it on Emily’s website and have been praying it each morning just recently to start my day.

Oh God, gather me now to be with you

as you are with me.

Soothe my tiredness;

quiet my fretfulness;

curb my aimlessness;

relieve my complusiveness;

let me be easy for a moment.

O Lord, release me

from the fears and guilts 

which grip me so tightly;

from the expectations and opinions 

which I so tightly grip,

that I may be open

to receiving what you give,

to risking something genuinely new,

to learning something refreshingly different.

Forgive me

for claiming so much for myself

that I leave no room for gratitude;

for confusing exercises in self-importance

with acceptance of self-worth;

for complaining so much of my burdens

that I become a burden;

for competing against others so insidiously

that I stifle celebrating them

and receiving your blessing

through their gifts.

O God, gather me to be with you 

as you are with me.

Amen.

By Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace

You can read what other Five Minute Fridayers have written here