Do you offer consolation and relief?

Or are you power, Lord, power to move the levers of the world?

Woe is upon me; I form a curl and mewl. But you cause me to rise, to walk, to act.

I plow the field, and the village is later fed. I dig a trench in the rains do not flood the granary. I turn a lathe and my neighbors have legs for the table.

You move me, Lord, to fashion what does not yet exist. Let me uncurl myself and walk away from woe.

Thy will be done.

(Letter #2,568)

How long the night. I hold on, and finally rises the sun. Was it in doubt?

How long the winter. Frozen ground and dwindling stores, yet finally comes the spring and thaw. Did I think the freeze was forever?

Bitter endurance. At the end of such waiting, I look for some way to hurry dawn and spring, yet they come when they come.

It is nearly sunrise, Lord. Hold my hand and smooth my hair. The last moment is the hardest yet it passes like the one before.

O dawn!

(Letter #2,597)

I have found a way to walk along. Parts are broad, smooth. Others narrow. You send this road, Lord, through mild climes and rough weather.

I worry where I will go, how I will fare. My road goes where it goes, even the forking paths rejoin.

You walk with me along the way, Lord.

Let me quit my study of maps. The way is. You are.

Thy will shall be done.

(Letter #2,596)

This quiet time, in which I seek to be with you, is it necessary? Could I not find you in howling winds, in the wreckage and aftermath of a hurricane, yea, even in war?

Yet I sit, seeking you, in quiet solitude.

Lord, let me see this time as the gift it is, easing my way to you.

I am still, Lord.

(Letter #2,595)