22 Elul 5777

Dear Heavenly Father,

Praised are you my Lord and may your holy name be praised in the heavens above and on the earth below for ever and ever.

Thank you for bringing me to this day, for waking me and breathing life into my soul.  Thank you for blessing me with one more day to spend with those I love and one more chance to be you light in this world.  Father, please grant me the strength and the wisdom to walk in your word and to show your love.  Please fill my heart with mercy so that I may be forgiving to others just as you have been forgiving with me.  Father, please guide my steps in your love and help me to see the good in all and to love my neighbor as you have instructed us to do.  Please my Lord, never remove your face from before me and guide my steps along the path you have set.  May my steps never turn to the right or the left, but continue down the path to your Kingdom.

Father, please help those who have been kidnapped from their families and sold as slaves.  This practice is an abomination and it must be stopped.  But we humans seem to turn a blind eye to this atrocity, and I ask you to help those people who cannot help themselves.  Father, your miracles are with us daily.  You can free them from the bondage of their captors, just as you freed your children from their bondage in Egypt.  You can deliver them from slavery to freedom with an utterance of your mouth, the breath of your being.  You can free them and return them to a life that is meaningful and productive.  You can lay low their captors and destroy them just as you destroyed the armies of Egypt.  Father, our hope lies in you.

Blessed are you O Lord our God who delivers his people from bondage to freedom.

Amen!