Thanksgiving for Love and Friendship

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father! We bless Thee for Thy good gifts to us Thy children. We thank Thee for the power to bless and gladden one another by the warmth of love, and the truth and tenderness of friendship. For the love given to us in our youth; for the tender care taken of us in our feeble days; for a father’s watchfulness and a mother’s care, we bless Thee. Let not this wealth of love be wasted on us; as we have received, so may we give. O Lord! Who didst see that it was not good for man to be alone, we bless Thee for the love between man and woman. May we know it in all its sweetness and nobleness; may we learn from love the lesson of self-denial; of preferring another to ourselves; of cheerful patience; and of toil made sweet by the charities of home.

Make our love pure, strong, tender, and true. Let it be constant in life, firm in death, and ever-loving before Thee.

Bless our friends, may they all be friends of God. May they be true to us, and we to them. Give us the friendship that knows no change; the love that loves even unto the end. In love and friendship make us faithful; faithful to praise, faithful to blame; true and constant, in dark days as in glad hours. May all earthly love help us to rise to true feeling of Thy wondrous love; and may Thy love lift up our earthly love into pureness, brightness, and eternal Life. O Thou, Who art Lord of the love that lifts the lowly into loving life with Thee! Thou, Who art the Alpha and the Omega! be Thou our love’s Beginning! be Thou our love’s great End; and make us to love Thee above all, that Thou mayest be all in all!—AMEN.