So that your strength can become manifest

　　Dear Lord, you instructed your disciples to take nothing on their journey except a staff, and to stay in the houses of those to whom they came to preach your word. In this state of physical weakness and dependency, they manifested your power and strength. They called people to repentance, cast out devils, anointed and cured many who were sick.

　　As long as I am still carrying around with me heavy baggage of whatever kind—physical, mental, emotional—and as long as I am still concerned with my own projects and plans, how can I expect to be a real witness to you and a healer of others?

　　Help me, O Lord, to detach myself more and more from all that prevents you from touching the lives of suffering man, women, and children through me. Show me the way to be poor, so that your richness can become visible, and the way to be weak, so that your strength can become manifest. Amen.

~ Henry J.M. Nouwen, “A Cry for Mercy”, pg.126.