Prayer for Strength

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.”