Help us to ask

Almighty God, to whom our needs are known before we ask: Help us to ask only what accords with your will; and those good things which we dare not, or in our blindness cannot ask, grant us for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Lately, I'm finding a lot of comfort in these words from our prayerbook, which I use to conclude the Prayers of the People.

We human beings seem to have a lot of trouble with asking for help. Many of us would rather compel or manipulate others into giving us what we need, or wear ourselves out doing it all ourselves, or just give up and go without.

God knows what we need and offers all blessings to us, whether we can figure out how to ask for them or not. We need to learn how to ask for the right things not for God's sake, but for our own, so that we can be at peace with our own desires.

This prayer calls on God to train our hearts, so that all we want is God's presence in our lives and in our communities. It offers up our voices to God, so that in God's grace we can discover our true voices and use them to speak out for God's love and God's justice.