I prayed to a mystery.Sometimes I was simply aware of the mystery. I saw a flash of it during a trip to New York that David and I took before we were married. We were walking on a busy sidewalk in Manhattan. I dont remember if it was day or night. A man with a wound on his forehead came toward us. His damp ragged hair might have been clotted with blood or maybe it was only dirt. He wore deeply dirty clothes. His red swollen hands cupped in half-fists swung loosely at his sides. His eyes were focused somewhere past my right shoulder. He staggered while he walked. The sidewalk traffic flowed around him and with him. He was strange and frightening and at the same time he belonged on the Manhattan sidewalk as much as any of us. It was that paradox -- that he could be both alien and resident both brutalized and human that he could stand out in the moving mass of people like a sea monster in a school of tuna and at the same time be as much at home as any of us -- that stayed with me. I never saw him again but I remember him often and when I do I am aware of the mystery.Years later I was out on our property on the Olympic Peninsula cutting a path through the woods. This was before our house was built. After chopping through dense salal and hacking off ironwood bushes for an hour or so I stopped exhausted. I found myself standing motionless intensely aware of all of the life around me the breathing moss the chattering birds the living earth. I was as much a part of the woods as any millipede or cedar tree. At that moment too I was aware of the mystery.Sometimes I wanted to speak to this mystery directly. Out of habit I began with Dear God and ended with Amen. But I thought to myself Im not praying to that old man in the sky. Rather Im praying to this thing I cant define. It was sort of like talking into a foggy valley.Praying into a bank of fog requires alot of effort. I wanted an image to focus on when I prayed. I wanted something to pray to. but I couldnt go back to that old man. He was too closely associated with all Id left behind.

In the end what will you fight for-- what got there first what got there last or what has been there all along

The whole function of the life of prayer is then to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward written precepts of the moral and divine laws but above all lives Gods law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will.

Prayer is an insurance policy that you can never lapse on.

Less than twenty-four hours ago I had a family and a home and a dreamworld I thought was as close to heaven as you could get without dying.I have none of that now.My brother is dead. My parents threw me out of the houseagainwith barely enough to fill a small suitcase. And my dreamworld I was right when I figured that if God ever did exist he turned his back on humanity centuries ago.

Jesus kept it simple. The lesson wasnt complicated. I speak you believe My word your son will be fine. We complicate what God has made simple by seeing the world through human eyes. We want to see in order to believe and presume that our limitations are His.

Choose to view life through Gods eyes. This will not be easy because it doesnt come naturally to us. We cannot do this on our own. We have to allow God to elevate our vantage point. Start by reading His Word the Bible...Pray and ask God to transform your thinking. Let Him do what you cannot. Ask Him to give you an eternal divine perspective.

Your is full of purpose Push past the set back and press into the set up.

You life is full of purpose. Push past the set back and press into the set up.

Warriors will always have wounds from the battle but they are only stronger from them.