Dear God, let my thoughts rest here, now, in this present moment. Already, so early, my mind casts forward days, weeks, and even months. Hopes and fears cloud my thinking and I barely know where I am and what is real.

My body, seated, still, in this room with you, breath slowly moving in and out. Lord, bring my attention here. What transpires here, between me and you, is all I need to be attentive to.

Let me please place my relationship with you in the center of my thoughts. Let it be the only reality with which I concern myself.

Let me do your will today, O Lord.

(Letter #996)

Dear God, cease the chatter in my mind. The worry, the fear, the planning, the scheming, the envy, the self-regard. Burn it all away and leave my thoughts a clear plain. Let me recognize the landscape of my day for the trivia it is.

All the little happenings and challenges. Let me look past it all to see your will for me.

Lord, I know you support me underneath all. Let me perform my duties obediently, without fanfare and without doubt for my future. Let me act as a child, secure that at day’s end, when I lay my head down, you will have provided all I need.

Let me become willing to seek your will in all things and at all times.

(Letter #995)

Dear God, I am so quick to see my life as filled with troubles. Small amounts of disarray are seen as chaos, brief periods of waiting for needed resources are seen as denial, honest criticisms from others are seen as failure. The story I tell myself is that I face trials and opposition, and that I must battle and endure to survive.

Lord, let me shrug off these attitudes like an old cloak. If I look honestly at the course of my life, none of these troubles has ever been as real nor as momentous as I feared and perceived. Disarray has become healing order, waiting has ended, criticisms forgotten and corrected.

Lord, let me dismiss these things I too easily see as calamity. Let me turn my attention to finding the willingness to seek and do your will.

Let me walk slowly, deliberately, joyfully through my day, untouched and cheerful. The mud of the world cannot touch me.

(Letter #994)

Dear God, I alter or withhold action so often as a result of my emotions. I feel one way, so I act. I feel another way, so I change. What you call me to do, my obligations, persist. Yet I approach them chaotically, all at the whims of my emotions.

Lord, let me have steadfast equanimity. Let me glow with your light, and bring this even, positive disposition to my every task. No matter the calling, let me thankfully immerse myself in the doing.

I have such a changeable nature. Steady me. Govern me. Suck the drama out of my life, the chaos, the disorder. Place my feet where they belong, and guide me to set them each one before the other, steady and carefully.

Grant me a deliberate nature today, let me be an oasis of peace. Let me bring this peace to all today.

(Letter #993)