Today’s Prayer to Passage is from the February 2014 issue of Bits & Pieces, a division of Lawrence Ragan Communications, Inc. with Mark Ragan, CEO; A. A. King, Editor; Farion Grove Coy, Editor; Erin Merz Stahl, Graphic Designer; and Jennifer Mazurek, Marketing Director.

Today I pray, “Dear God, I began journaling as a spiritual practice as a teenager. I journaled daily in college, filling books upon books of searching discovery. Years later, I find myself continuing to be fascinated by life’s gems garnered through personal excavation of self. What can be dug up, dusted off, and polished today? Amen.”

Following my prayer, I held the book in my hands, concentrating on my prayer, and opened it to reveal this passage:

“When you cannot make pure goods and full weight, go to something else that is honest, even if it is breaking stone.”
—JAMES GAMBLE

Sharing myself is a wholesale good. Sometimes it’s a bit heavy. Sometimes it’s a cheap little artifact. Excavation of self is a ceremonial dig. Uncovering something priceless begins when we trust our inner knowing. Then, and only then, are we able to bring to light a gleaming perfect truth.

This reminds me of a poem I wrote at age fourteen: I am a stone retrieved from the quarry. Not because I am weighted in value. Not because I am a rarity. And not because my surface glimmers in the sun. But one, and only one, of me exists, which holds more worth than all the others combined.