What to pray after someone dies
Lord Jesus,
You personally know the pain of death.
You know that grief cuts deeply into the human soul,
that it feels like there will never be an end to the heartbreak.
Someone wonderful has died.
You know that, too.
The death of your children is beautiful to you,
but it is so difficult for us.
I am feeling grief for some good people
who have lost a loved one.
They are overwhelmed, shocked, traumatized, bereft.
They feel an ache they never could have imagined.
Only you can fill that gaping hole left by their loved one.
Only you can pour hope and peace, ever so gradually, into their life.
Only you can give them courage to live again–
to seek healing, to start over.
When they’re ready.
I ask for your peace to fall on them right now.
Erase the terror about the future.
Block an regret about the past.
Stop the panic about the present.
I beg you, Holy Spirit, to speak words of love and comfort into the dark fearful places of loss.
Bring them support from people who speak love,
who speak seldom, yet are present.
Give them friends to fill the empty spaces left by their loved one’s home-going.
Lord, God, heal their broken hearts, I beg you.
And give me the empathy to keep them always in my prayers and actions.
Amen.
