Prayer of Hope

Dear friends
I chanced upon this prayer a couple of weeks ago, and I'm posting it here as a prayer of hope. It has a very positive, joyful, hopeful ring to it. I offer it to all of you.

"O Lord, only you can count all the blessings of my life. I give you thanks for the gifts of memory and expectation, for pleasure that comforts and pain that brings needed change, for deep meanings revealed and for that which remains unknown because I may not be able to accept it, for variety and difference in my world, for melody and silence, for all my senses…and above all for the overpowering feeling that somehow I am loved and accepted by You and that nothing can separate me from that Love. In Jesus name I pray. Amen."

Info on the painting:
The Girlhood of Mary Virgin
(1848-983.2 x 65.4 cm) (oil on canvas)
The lily, a flower symbolising Mary's purity, is here being grown in a pot and carefully tended by a child angel. This refers to the Angel Gabriel who will later announce to Mary that she is to bear the Son of God. Rossetti gives us a snapshot of Mary as a child, seated with her mother St Anne and embroidering a lily while her father St Joachim prunes a vine in the background. The painting is rich in Christian symbolism: the dove alludes to the Holy Spirit, the vine to Christian truth, the rose on the windowsill is another flower associated with the Virgin, and the lamp is a symbol of piety. Even the colours of the books that the lily pot stands on refer to Christian virtues, such as gold for charity and green for hope.