Today’s Prayer to Passage will be from the book ‘Life’s Little Treasure Book on Things that Really Matter’ by H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Today I pray, “Dear God, When we slow down and take it all in, life, what are we to appreciate the most? Amen.”

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

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.

Everything else can wait. This reminds me of a poem that my mother had framed in the nursery of her four children:
“The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow.
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.”

I rocked my newborn baby nephew to sleep in the hospital on the day he was born. And I will hold him in lullaby at my parents’ home, my childhood home, this Christmas. Everything else can wait. This love is the center of my universe, my holy grail, my special powers. This love rests not at the mercy of modern day King Herods, all of the mundane restlessness setting out to destroy such love. This love is angelic, arriving to guide us forward. This love is a star, the light to follow toward the greatest gift. This love ventures us farthest and marks us wisest of all wise men.