Prayer for grandmothers

Father, Your Word says Your strength is made perfect in weakness. That promise belongs to the apostle. It also belongs to the older believer, maybe even more. It is not a slogan. It is the true way You work in lives that have run long.

Lord, my weakness is not an idea. My hands shake more than they did. My voice is thinner. My mind drops names. My body wakes at four with aches the doctor cannot explain. Your Word says Your strength is most fully shown right here. Not in spite of the weakness. In it. Through it. By it.

Lord Jesus, this is the part of the apostle's experience I understand best now. The strength I once thought I had was mostly my own. The strength I have today, when there is any, is clearly Yours. Weakness has been a teacher I did not like. It has taught me things I would not have learned in good health.

Make Your strength perfect in me today. Through the weak old voice on the phone with my son. Through the weak hand writing the note. Through the weak prayer offered for the grandchildren. Let Your strength be Your gift, not my own effort. That is the right way for this season of my life.

Amen.