The Sailor's Prayer

I have a request, a request for prayer.  Some of you know that one of my daughter’s is a Naval officer.  She just graduated from Supply Officers School and is being immediately deployed.  Within about 30 minutes, or less, she is getting on a Navy plane to be flown with others to her ship with a few hundred Marines onboard to a not so nice place in the world.  Me, I am on my way to a night of prayer and asking the intercession of the Blessed Mother and St. Nicholas.

Please join your prayers with mine, not just from my daughter but for all those who serve and for their families who remain at home.  Two weeks ago, someone ask me if I was getting use to this since another son-in-law just returned from his 4th deployment to Afghanistan and will return in a few months, and one of my grandsons graduates from Marine Corp boot camp next month, and I do not need to be reminded where he will be going.  The answer is no.  It is no because too many people forget those who serve and their families, just as too few people remember to serve in the first place.

So please pray with me for ALL.  And less we forget, call to mind the words in the Divine Liturgy which are prayed several times when we pray for the President and for all armed forces.  “Grant, O Lord, a peaceful rule, that we also, sharing their tranquility, may lead a tranquil and calm life in all pity and dignity.”  How quickly we do forget.

Father Theodosius
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I found the following yesterday and emailed it to my daughter and thought to share with all of you as well.


                        
                    
      THE SAILOR’S PRAYER
By Rev Andew J Demotses

The recent loss of the fishermen in a boating accident in the waters off Gloucester, and the dedication of the moving monument to the wives and children of fishermen lost at sea, reminded me of the simple yet eloquent prayer offered by every sailor who sets off to sea – “Keep us, our God; for your ocean is so wide and our boat is so small.”

How truly beautiful those words are. They speak to us with a special meaning precisely because we understand that they might well be uttered by each of us at some point on our sometimes difficult journey on the sea of life. We are so weak, so helpless, and yet so forgetful of our God’s loving kindness. Tossed to and fro at the mercy of circumstance, we would likely perish if He did not hold us in his providential care.

At times the challenges and difficulties of life threaten to overwhelm us. We sense our weaknesses and our inability to overcome them. The problems we face are so great and perplexing that we feel they have no solution. Our pain can be so deep that it seems to have no end. We feel like crying out to God in the words of the psalmist “I am poor and needy . . . you are my help and my deliverer.” (70:5).

It is precisely then, when the storm is strongest and at its most threatening, that we need to remember that when we call upon God and cast ourselves on Him with simple trust, we can be sure that His great power and wisdom will carry us through even the greatest tribulation and deliver us to the safe water of a calm harbor. And so, even thought we each journey in a “small boat” on a “wide ocean”, we can surely trust our God to guide and protect us even in the worst of storms. We need only ask him to keep us this day, and every day that yet remains.

source: http://www.goarch.org/resources/sermons/sermonettes/sermonettes4