Grace is the first and last word of the Christian life, and all of us are desperately in need of mercy and are deeply loved. Faith comes as a gift.

And any artisan will tell you that there is something miraculous about their craft. Madeline L’Engle said that any good work of art is more and better than the artist. Shakespeare, she said, “wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew; Rembrandt’s brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend.”3 A gardener cannot make daffodils grow, nor can a baker force the alchemic glory of yeast and sugar. And yet we are given means of grace that we can practice…

There is one prayer in particular, toward the end of Compline, that came to contain my longing, pain, and hope. It’s a prayer I’ve grown to love, that has come to feel somehow like part of my own body, a prayer we’ve prayed so often now as a family that my eight-year-old can rattle it off verbatim:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.