Providence.

Thank you for supply coming to me. Thank you for healing coming to me. Thank you for peace coming to me.

Tomorrow is not yet here. But each moment becomes now.

You are coming to me, Lord. I will be here.

(Letter #2,333)

Submission, acceptance, desire.

If I submit to your will, where is the virtue?

If I accept your will, where is the faith?

If, Lord, I desire your will for me to come to pass, will we then draw nearer to one another?

You have planned each moment of my life. Crack open my heart, let me come to desire what you have in store for me.

(Letter #2,332)

How will my walk through this day be remembered?

Of me will they say, he kicked up dust and trouble, that stuck to him in a cloud?

Will they say, the people cheered at his marvelous deeds?

O! Let me not churn the waters, nor bask in limelight. Let me pass unnoticed, quietly polishing the floors of your mansions, Lord.

Of me let them say, who has been here to tidy the shelves?

(Letter #2,331)

I retreat to seek your presence. Are you here in this small room? Why think I that you hide yourself in a lair?

Sunlit plane, active rampart, factory floor. You are present on the journey, in the heat of battle, in the midst of collective labor.

You are also here with me in retreat. As I leave here, let me meet you and meet you again.

Thy will be done.

(Letter #2,330)

I am chasing after banners, a dog that will never catch the hare.

Why run? I could stop. The world would continue on.

Let me become willing to grow roots, Lord.

(Letter #2,329)

I have tried to learn. I have tried to make myself ready for you. I have tried to draw near to you.

And yet, some days in the dawn, I sit here alone, pining for you.

Where is yesterday’s secret friendship? Return, sweet dove.

I am trying to be ready.

(Letter #2,328)

Am I the dropped seed, gowing a shoot up through the sidewalk crack?

Am my part of the orchard, planned and thriving?

Am I the sower of these things?

Lord, let me grow.

(Letter #2,327)

Around me I see walls, hemmed in. Dim shapes in the gloom. Which are sleeping beasts? I cannot say.

The light grows bright and my eyes blink. These shapes are heaps of treasure, the room no prison but a library of wonder. The chains I felt before were but the embrace of my love.

Did the light transform this scene? I was never captive; what changed was my sight.

Unblind me, Lord.

(Letter #2,326)

This sack of woe and vexation that I drag through the day, of what is it filled?

Worry over unyet-happened calamity. Resentment over past, trivial conflict. Despair over the fear of unmet needs.

O Lord! O Friend! What an unnecessary burden to carry.

These things have accumulated that I may abandon them, not that I might keep and grow them.

Let me run with joy, Lord, empty-handed.

(Letter #2,325)

I plan, and act. I succeed, or fail. I look back in pride, or remorse.

All a fiction. Let me see the truth. My success was as grand as the knot in a child’s shoelaces, a trivial matter achieved with difficulty. My failure no more consequential than a spilled tumbler of water.

And yet, in the morning, here am I, planning my day as if it were a great battle.

Lord, visit me in this moment. Help me to inhabit it.

(Letter #2,324)