Oh,
do not pray for easy lives.
Pray
to be stronger.
Do
not pray for tasks equal to your powers.
Pray
for powers equal to your tasks.
Then
the doing of your work will be no miracle.
But
you shall be a miracle.
Every
day you shall wonder at yourself,
at
the richness of life which has come to you
by
the grace of God.
~
Phillip Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, 1893, (altered slightly), in “Going up
to Jerusalem,” Twenty Sermons (1886).
Brooks also wrote the words to the Christmas hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
