Someone for Whom I Am Life He was young to have a stroke, but that didn’t make it any less debilitating. No one knew how much of his old self he’d recover. When I met him, his right arm was cramped, his fingers unwieldy. Speaking was not easy. He needed help with simple tasks. His nurse said he often refused to try to feed himself or brush his teeth. He seemed to have lost the will to live. Call him Jacob. It seems he’d wrestled with angels, though his wound was more severe than his namesake’s, and he felt anything but blessed. Since we rarely recognize godsends when they come…
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The Place of Prayer in Happiness
The Power of Prayer Why do we pray? As a chaplain, I’ve observed that people pray for many reasons. Some seem to think prayer will protect them, or get them right with God, or solve their problems. Others pray as if out of habit. Then there are those for whom prayer seems to be sacred, a moment of true connection with something bigger, larger, grander than our own essence. Still others appear to experience grace and affection when they pray. Most of us pray for all these reasons at one time or another. For most of my life, I didn’t pray. I never thought of it, really, not even when…