Enter my small life.

"Lord!  Give me courage and love to open the door and constrain You to enter, whatever the disguise You come in, even before I fully recognize my guest.
  Come in! Enter my small life.
Lay Your sacred hands on all the common things and small interests of that life and bless and change them.  Transfigure my small resources, make them sacred.  And in them give me Your very Self."
Evelyn Underhill

  In praying this prayer, I am not asking for grandiose things.  I have felt the small life that Underhill prays for here.  I have felt me get the oil change for the car, make the cookies for the party, paint the bathroom walls, sweep the porch, mow the yard, send the thank you card, go on a walk, pray with a friend.  I have felt the issuance of time, and a lot of time at that, given to my days, and I am asking just how we may best use this day and be in this day.
  I have heard the message of insight, given by the scholar Mary Gordon in her book Reading Jesus, when she retells the story of the rich man in Luke 16, starting with verse 19.  The rich man knows the beggar Lazarus is by the gates of his home, desiring to be fed.  But as Gordon points out, "The rich man's sin is not only a failure to share his wealth, but equally important, a failure of attention...He doesn't seem like the worst person in the world: he's not cruel or dishonest or hypocritical.  He just doesn't see."  Gordon goes on to say, "This parable expresses the genius of Christian charity:  that is must be personal, personalized...For Jesus, what is required is an encounter.  What is insisted upon is the personal responsibility of love.  Jesus asks of Peter, 'Who do you say I am?'  When Peter reports what others have said, Jesus isn't satisfied.  He repeats, 'Who do you say I am?'"
  So in the midst of all my common things and small interests, in my desire to pay attention, I hear God asking me what he asked of Peter, "Who do you say I am?"