Dear God, somewhere deep inside me, there you are. As I venture inside myself I feel you in my distant center, a long day’s journey. This activity all around me, this calamity, this distraction, has driven you farther and farther away along this inner road.

Let me turn from the world and toward you. It is my own choice to be distracted. Let me choose what is better.

I pray for signs, power, intercession – forgetting it is all here already inside me. I will not find it in the world. I must look inside to where you already are. When your voice reaches me through the statements of others, it is this inner voice echoing back to me. I recognize you in the world because you are reflected.

Lord, let me see you. Let me quietly look and listen for you.

O! Here you are.

(Letter #1290)

Dear God, enter me; take up residence in my heart, rearrange the furnishings to suit you. Reorder me. I take such care with my own plans and habits, I meticulously square the corners and tidy the surfaces. All this, a measure of my need for control and order, itself a form of willfulness. It reflects that I do not trust, my faith is lacking.

Walk into my life, Lord, like a strong wind. Flip over the tables and give me new chores. Quicken my heart and turn my panic into love.

Let me be used today. Let me abandon the plans that do not work and follow your designs. Rebuild me and my foundation.

(Letter #1289)

Dear God, let me see through this veil. All these events around me seem so real, and my reactions and emotions equally so. Someone praises me, and I swell. Someone criticizes me, and I shrink. Vulnerability becomes apparent, and I tremble.

Lord, grant me vision that pierces these illusions. I have sufficient resources unto the day, and gifts heaped all all about me — forgotten treasure. The shadowy figures who mill around me, murmuring into my ear, are ghosts.

Lord, let me make for myself an accounting of all these gifts you have long since delivered to me. Let me see reality, your constant support and love, and recognize the misty nature of my reactions. My feelings bear so little relation to reality: I hear harsh words, and I react as if a stone had been hurled.

Grant me faith, Lord, and make this my reality. Let me see the world through a new lens. Let me view all who come to me as sent by you.

Thy will be done.

(Letter #1288)

Dear God, let me be simple. I complicate so much, building castles of intellect. My own thinking obscures what is real and solid.

Lord, please let me abandon prideful musings. Let me seek simple truth, even as this is unappreciated by others. Indeed, let me not only accept their judgment but delight in being seen as meek and unworthy.

Let others jabber. Strip away the useless decoration in my thinking and attitudes. Lord, let me be plain.

Thy will be done.

(Letter #1287)