Prayers before sleep

Prayers for the end of the day, said before sleep.

The Christian tradition has always taken seriously the moment just before sleep. Sleep itself was understood as a daily image of death, and waking as a daily image of resurrection. The prayers said in that window were correspondingly serious. The prayers gathered here come from the four major Christian traditions of evening prayer: the Anglican Compline service from the Book of Common Prayer, Luther's Evening Prayer from the Small Catechism, the Orthodox prayer for the close of day, and the children's bedtime prayer that has been said in Protestant families since the 18th century. They are all short. They are all asking the same thing.