Prayer of the Day

Dear Lord, show me your kindness and your gentleness, you who are meek and humble of heart. So often I say to myself, "The Lord loves me," but very often this truth does not enter into the center of my heart. The fact that I get so easily upset because of disappointment, so easily angered because of a slight criticism, and so easily depressed because of slight rejection, shows that your love does not yet fill me. Why, otherwise, would I be so easily thrown off balance? What can people do to me, when I really know that you love me, care for me, protect me, defend me, guide me and support me? What does a small-or even great-failure mean, when I know that you are with me in all my sorrows and turmoil? Yet time and again I have confessed that I have not let your love descend fully from my mind into my heart, and that I have not let my knowing grow into a real, full knowledge that pervades all my being.

In the coming weeks, O Lord, I will be able to see again how much you indeed love me. Let these weeks become an opportunity for me to let go of all my resistances to your love and an occasion for you to call me closer to you.

Amen

Henri Nouwen
Prayers from Genesse