Morning prayer · 29 October
A true friend
My Lord, what a true friend you are, and how strong! You show your power whenever you choose, and you always choose to, if only we choose it too. Let everything you’ve made praise you, Lord of the world! I wish a voice could go out over the whole earth telling how faithful you are to those who love you. Everything else fails, but you, Lord of all, never fail. Those who love you, how little they have to suffer! How gently, how tenderly, how kindly you treat them! Sometimes you seem to put them through a hard trial, but it’s so that, in the depths of that trial, they learn the depths of your love. Everything fails me, Lord, but if you won’t leave me, I will never fail you. Amen.
No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because everything I have learned from My Father I have made known to you.
Adapted from Teresa of Ávila, The Life of St Teresa (tr. David Lewis, 1904), in plain words. The verse is from the Berean Standard Bible (public domain). Drawing: Mutter.