Dear God, let me look around me at the things in this world, and see them all for the trivial matters they are. The objects in my view, the people who come and go, their actions, my feelings about these things – all these things are like a veil drawn between me and reality.

Let me see through this veil. Let me see you, O Lord. My relationship with you, my stance toward you, my performance of your guidance, are the only things that have important.

Instead, I turn my attention and energies to illusion. I act to please others, I work to address worldly events. I squeeze in my time with you on the margins. How backwards I have things.

Lord, let me place you first. Let me live in your real world and see the objects, events, and characters around me as the shadows they are. Let me listen for your guidance. Let your voice boom disembodied through this shadow world. Thy will be done.

(Letter #984)

Dear God, I cannot know what you will deliver to me today. I awaken fearful of what may transpire. What will I face? What will be asked of me? These worries are termites, chewing through the foundations of my days. They bedevil me because I see wrongly.

I fear disturbance and calamity — yet you provide variety and bounty. I need but see it correctly.

I plan a placid day and you upend its course. I plan an activity and you thwart it. I plan leisure and you present me with new chores. I plan an expenditure and you withhold resources.

Lord, I see all these things as problems. As chaos. As trouble.

Let me see rightly. Let me view your gifts for what they are. You alter my plans, perhaps, to teach me. You deprive me in the physical realm, perhaps, to grow my strength. You take away resources, perhaps, to spur invention. You deliver challenges, perhaps, so I may overcome them as a beacon to my fellows.

Lord, let me properly see everything you offer as a gift. My very life is grace. Let me thank you at every juncture.

Thy will be done.

(Letter #983)

Dear God, my supply feels depleted. Strength, goodwill, finances – all seems inadequate to the challenges that the day brings.

I am reminded of a friend I knew long ago. He was poor, old, dying. Yet he persisted in giving away his possessions. It was his spiritual practice. Whenever he felt selfish, sorry for himself, he would give away a significant portion of his holdings. In his poverty, he seemed, to me, a giant.

Lord, let me follow and learn from his example. I pity myself, and feel challenged. It is exactly at this point that you call me to demonstrate my faith in you.

Lord, let me be generous today, without thought of safety. Let me have faith in you, dependence upon you. Let me give myself over to you with abandon. Let me add energy and resources into the stream of life around me, secure in your love for me.

Let me do your will today. Let me not try to protect my corner, but instead to give.

(Letter #982)

Dear God, let my spiritual life enlarge. I have only the smallest kernel of faith, and so often I ignore it. I worry over events. I exert myself trying to change conditions. I try to bend others’ actions to my will. How does this reflect faith? Indeed, it does the opposite.

Lord, let this small kernel of faith, this speck of belief that you might be available to me, grow in power. Let me withhold action, release worry, and accept others’ doings. Let me believe that you watch over all these things I am inclined to try to control.

Let my grasping hands unclench. Let me not exert my will in trying to supplant you, but instead let me try to discern your guidance. Let me walk your path today, not blaze my own trail. Thy will be done.

(Letter #981)

Dear God, let me today try to be of service to those around me. Let this be my sole aim. Let me try to help. Let me be a source of positive energy, of healing, comfort. Let me not add agitation into the world. There is plenty.

Let me remember that the emotions held by those around me may be extreme and that they may not be acting at their best, as I myself often do not. Let me pause prior to acting or speaking. Let me assume positive intent from all whom I encounter today. Let me place their happiness and health ahead of my own.

Let me be the person you would have me be today. Let me be willing to improve.

(Letter #980)

Dear God, I am already thinking, even at this early hour, of ways to distract and divert myself from my obligations. Before I know it, the day will be over and I will wonder where it has gone.

Why do I shirk so? It is invariably the case that, when I sit down to do my work, it is both more simple and more enjoyable than I feared.

What is in my mind? I imagine there will be a way to get out of the deadline, to kick the can down the road. This amounts to a childish belief that the rules do not, or should not, apply to me. I am special and therefore to be granted privileges.

Indeed, this self-privileging extends into many realms. I am convinced deep down that somehow I will have unnaturally long longevity, that I will remain hale throughout my days, that my body ought not to show any signs of age. I convince myself that, with magical adherence to a strict regimen of nutrition, this will be so.

Escaping death, escaping deadlines, escaping obligation. All infantile fantasies.

Lord, today let me accept the conditions around me as they truly are. Let me acknowledge the restrictions placed naturally upon me by the world. Let me have the grace to act diligently in the face of them.

Let me meet my obligations today – not as a way of staying out of trouble, or as a way of pleasing temporal authority, but as a way of expressing my obedience to you.

Let this be a way of acting toward unselfishness.

(Letter #979)

Dear God, I feel myself alive. I feel my body in this world. My breath, constant back ground noise. Air on my skin. The pressure of a cushion on my lower back.

These are the things that make up this present moment. Lord, let me experience your presence with the same immediacy. Let me sense your underlying hand with the same assurance that I bring to my physical sensations.

You have constructed this present moment and you will have done so in the next as well. It is left to me to accept this.

You disclose yourself to me every day, yet I too rarely look to see. Let me open my eyes to you, let me see you infusing every moment.

(Letter 978)

Dear God, you walk toward me as I walk toward you. I need but seek you and you are there to be found. I need but call you and you answer. Why then, should I ever feel apart from you? Yet the truth is, on many days my faith in you is false, my spirit a desert. I cannot find you on those days.

Lord, let me see you rightly. You are always there. When I feel alone, I feel victimized by desolation yet, even in such blank spots, you are present everywhere I might look. If I will only see you.

Lord, let me have eyes to see you. I so remember times when I felt alone. Today I feel near to you. Tomorrow, if bereft, I can feel the same as today. Let me feel how safe you make me. All is well, and you make it so.

Let me live this day as a gift, knowing it is not the only one you ever will bestow upon me.

(Letter #977)

Dear God, I approach you expectantly, even enthusiastically. I anticipate our time together. My Lord, my secret friend. Locked up in my closet, away behind the barriers I erect from the world, I speak to you and I listen for response. I cry out to you, “what shall I do?” Yet I would better ask for the willingness to wait, to watch to see instead what miracles you will do.

I harbor the illusion that this world is a challenge for me to conquer, a puzzle for me to solve, labor for me to dispatch. As if all were up to me. Yet you are the motive force behind all. The workings and movements are yours.

Lord, I pretend to believe you. Yet I know well the insufficiency of my belief, for what I truly seek is a set of instructions for my own action. If I do not act, the structure of the world will collapse. So I believe.

Lord, dispel this fallacy. Take away my illusions of power. Let me see your dominion as the gift it is. I do not have to support the world, nor do the events of the day depend upon me.

You will provide. You do provide. You have always done so, my secret friend.

Let me believe in you today.

(Letter #976)

Dear God, let me have and bring joy today. So often I feel myself endure hardship or disappointment, yet if I examine this attitude, I find it is founded upon illusion. My disappointments are only so because that is how I perceive them.

In truth, I am surrounded on all sides with reasons to rejoice. I awakened under a roof and without hunger. I have people who love me in my life, and I them. I am not uncertain of the source of my next meal. My limbs work, my mind is clear. I am employed.

And above all, I am in relationship with you, my sweet Lord. I speak to you each morning.

I wander through halls of treasure, eyes closed, cursing each time I collide with some new chest of gold, believing it an obstacle. Lord, impel me to open my eyes and see the palace you have built around me. Seeing it, let me share the news with my fellow wanderers, for we are all shuffling around, equally blind.

Let me reflect your light upon this world.

(Letter #975)