At Night

(2019 Book of Common Prayer)

O Lord, support us all the day long through this trouble-filled life,
until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes,
and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.
Then in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last. Amen.

A Prayer That Descends

There is a rare kind of prayer that does not ask for change so much as it asks for companionship through what is. It does not pretend to erase trouble, and it does not offer dramatic escape. Instead, it offers sustaining presence—support for the long day, quiet for the closing hours, and rest for the soul when the work is complete.

It is a prayer of descent. A gentle, dignified surrender. And in that surrender, there is a hidden strength.

Symbolism in the Pattern of a Day

This prayer follows the arc of a single day—but like much of the best liturgical language, it carries two meanings: the literal and the ultimate.

• “All the day long” speaks of our daily striving, but also of the full sweep of a life.
• “Until the shadows lengthen” signals not just dusk, but the slow, inevitable dimming of vitality that comes with age, with grief, with the drawing near of death.
• “The evening comes”—an arrival, a culmination.
• “The busy world is hushed”—we are not told to hush it; it simply grows quiet on its own. All things eventually do.
• “The fever of life is over”—a phrase that draws together so many things: longing, restlessness, ambition, suffering, love, and all the vital patterns of our existence.
• “And our work is done”—what everyone of us hopes to say honestly, at the end of our time.

This is not resignation. It is acceptance with grace, acceptance of the sacred rhythm of rest. It echoes Genesis and Sabbath, sleep and death, life and eternity.

Rest as Vocation

The last half of the prayer moves on from labor to lodging, also deeply symbolic.

Then in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

Lodging is a temporary word. It's something one does on a journey or a pilgrimage. Not home, but shelter on the way. Yet it is “safe”—a place where the watch is kept and the door is closed gently behind us.

“Holy rest” recalls more than sleep. It evokes the sanctity of the seventh day, the blessing placed on stopping. Not just the cessation of activity, but a stillness that receives us. And finally, “peace at the last”—a quieting of all the things that clamored.

Here, rest is not the reward for having survived life. It is the final form of a relationship, what we are given by mercy.

A Prayer for Those Who Sense the Evening

This prayer resonates with those who have an eye on the western horizon: the aged, the grieving, the tired. But it also is for anyone who feels the cost of life’s fever—the striving, the busyness, the numbering of our days.

It offers a Christian vision of aging and dying in a quiet, almost monastic way. It doesn't dramatize. It lets twilight be twilight. And the God who is always unhurried is asked to be nearby for every step of it.

Living the Prayer

To pray this is to rehearse our ending without dread, using the language of dusk to shape the way we see the day, the way we see even today.

It is a prayer that can teach us to bless the day but not grasp at it, not cling to it.

“Support us all the day long… and peace at the last.”
There is no hurry in this line. But there is a hint of a hand being held out to us.

May this prayer help all of us find a place to live with an eye on the western sunset.