Prayers in this series:
Life, Strength, The Church, Temptation, Gifts, Contentment
This prayer is part of a series of prayers influenced by the Hebrew dayenu prayer. A dayenu prayer is part of the traditional Jewish celebration of the Passover. "דַּיֵּנוּ/Dayenu" is Hebrew for "it would have been enough." The traditional dayenu prayer remembers God's miraculous deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, recognizing that each step along the way of that deliverance would have been enough, even if God didn't bring them all the way to the promised land.
These prayers are meant to help us submit to the will of God, recognizing that anything God does for us is more than enough. As you pray, you might not always completely agree with the statement you are reading. Allow the prayer to bring you to a deeper level of surrender. Let God stretch your ability to submit more completely to his will. Whatever God does through these prayers, you can know, it's enough.
A Dayenu Prayer—Life
Holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
all the days ordained for me were written
in your book before one of them came to be.
And if you knew what to expect at the beginning of each of those days,
while each day for me was filled with questions and uncertainty...
It would be enough.
And if You ordained my days,
but my days on earth were short...
It would be enough.
And if You ordained my days to be long,
but they were filled with difficulty, sorrow, and turmoil...
It would be enough.
And if you ordained my days to be long and prosperous
in the land that You, Lord God, have given to me,
and my life flew by in the blink of an eye...
It would be enough.
And if all my days were but an overture
to an eternity of gazing on Your beautiful face...
It would be more, far more, than I deserve.
For my days are like the evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
But you, Lord, sit enthroned forever,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Amen.
—Gary Brouwers © 2026 ReformedWorship.org, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
