A Simple Prayer for the End of the Day: Jim and June Young’s Evening Prayer

For Lent, right before we go to bed, we’ve been lighting a candle, singing a song, and saying a short evening prayer compiled by our dear family friends Jim and June Young.

During Advent and Christmastide our kids loved lighting the Advent candle with the wreath and singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” in our dark kitchen.

They were pretty upset when come Epiphany we stopped and went back to reading Bible stories and a prayer in their rooms sans flame. So for Lent, I knew we needed a candle again.

And it was an easy choice to sing Keith Green’s 1984 classic “Create in me a clean heart, O God” from Psalm 51:10-12 (King James Version). And to help count down the days we have a round glass sand tray filled with 46 rocks, the number of days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday.

But I also wanted to start praying a short evening prayer that I love compiled by our family friends Jim and June Young. I’ve written more about the wonderful Jim and June Young in this post. Jim was my dad’s theater professor at Wheaton College, and he and June became like surrogate grandparents to me when we moved to the east coast in junior high. Lily’s middle name “June” is in honor of June Young, and my prayer is that she will grow to be as kind and strong and gentle as June.

I was in junior high the first time I met Jimma (our special name for him) and June and was introduced to this little evening prayer. For several years they had ended the day with selections from the episcopal Book of Common Prayer typed up and taped into colored folders.

While we stayed in their beautiful log home in New Hampshire, we too would gather around the table and be given a folder to read aloud and pray the words to end the day.

It felt like all the of the love that Jimma and June had for us, the gentle wisdom and sheer joy in having us in their home, was symbolized and concentrated around that table, in that prayer. That we were, in that moment, part of their family.

Years later, Jimma would publish a lovely memoir of his life Stages: Growing in Faith and Art and he described how he and his grandson Jim first created their Evening prayer.

Emblematic of the way God has worked and is working in the lives our of family is the time of evening prayer. For about fourteen years now, we have been observing this ritual around the huge table before dessert…

[My grandson] Jim and I developed a litany for evening prayer, combing parts of “A prayer for Evening” and “Compline” from The Book of Common Prayer. [Grandson] Jim took the lead in deciding what to include from each. In multi-colored file folders we attached the single sheet of the litany and a sheet of possible songs. We usually start with a song, although as the grandchildren have grown it is less likely to be “All God’s Children Got a Place in the Choir,” [Grandson] Jim’s early favorite.

Then we pray a prayer of confession, someone reads a portion of scripture, we prayer a prayer of entreaty, then the sentence of requests or praises any of us wants to pray, then the Lord’s Prayer, and then a final prayer. It is a blessed time.

Amazingly, the children memorize most of the litany just by doing it. Our youngest grandchild, Erin, used to sit in her high chair listening attentively. Her ears, attuned by the Spirit, seemed to follow. We were amazed when, by the time she was two, she eagerly awaited each ‘Amen’ and joyously entered in, quite charismatically, each one in the right place.

from Stages: Growing in Faith and Art by Jim Young p. 132

Now it is two year old Lily June in the high chair, sometimes joining in on the parts she knows, mostly quietly looking at the candle. And if we are too tired, as we sometimes are on the days Jackson skips his nap, it is Lily who weeps and laments “no candle!”

We are joined by prayer into a wider family.

After my first visit to Jimma and June’s in the late 1990s, my family took home a photocopy of the prayers and from time to time we too would gather around our dining room table and pray. It always felt like a sacred time, that somehow we were connected to Jim and June and to the warmth and safety of their home and table.

In the years that followed, as I found myself in many small groups reading the full Evening Prayer II, I would always pause at the prayer of mission that was in Jimma and June’s evening prayer and think of them when I read the words

“Keep watch dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous: and all for your love’s sake. Amen. ” (p. 124, Book of Common Prayer)

And then after Jimma died, I would think about how for years he and June prayed nightly that blessing over the suffering and the dying, and then when it came time for Jimma in 2012 and June in 2019 to die and be with Jesus, other people around the world lifted them up in their last breaths, carrying them along in prayer.

That is the power of liturgy, of praying together with and for and on the behalf of others around the world. In my experience of this prayer it was all of those things: it was Jesus and I talking about my day and shortcomings in the confession, and his great love and grace for me; it was my family being wrapped up in the love and comfort and goodness of these spiritual grandparents Jimma and June and their safe haven of home; and it was also us stretching out our hands to all the people who were “working, and watching, and weeping” that night and being a part of Christ’s work “tending the sick, blessing the dying, soothing the suffering, pitying the afflicted, and shielding the joyous.”

I am so honored to bring my children into this ritual around the table. We don’t usually read a scripture verse, and our extemporaneous prayers of the people are usually very short, so it can easily be a three minute pocket of peace at the end of the day. I have nostalgia for the copy of the type written copy, the spacing of the letters makes me feel 13 again, safe in Jimma and June’s dining room. But below is an electronic version or here is a printable version in word with larger font for reading a low light.

EVENING PRAYER

Leader: The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end.

All: Amen.

Leader: Our help is in the Lord.

All: Maker of Heaven and earth.

Leader: Let us confess our sins

All: Almighty God, our heavenly father: We have sinned against you, through our own fault, in thought and word and deed, and in what we have left undone. For the sake of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us all our offenses; and grant that we may serve you in newness of life, to the glory of your Name. Amen

Leader: May the Almighty God grant us forgiveness of all our sins, and the grace and comfort of the Holy Spirit.

All : Amen.

Reader: (Scripture lesson selected)

All: Keep watch dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous: and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

Prayers of the People

Leader: Let us pray the Lord’s Prayer

All: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

All: Awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace. Amen.

Evening Prayer compiled by Jim Young from selections from the Book of Common Prayer

Do you have a short prayer or ritual that your family ended the day with?