Two questions:

1. Do you sometimes, perhaps now, feel like you’re coming out of a fog? In this time of trial, are we all peering from and trying to climb out of a cloud?
2. Do you feel like you need a miracle?

Each time you have a discouraging, obscuring, “foggy” thought, pierce it. Isolate it. Pop the bubble. Refuse to let it take root. Erase it on the blackboard of consciousness.

We make miracles happen with belief. Trust. That’s how we get answers to prayers. We need to open up. The sky is the limit. God hears us — and responds when it’s in His will.

It’s up to us to better appreciate how much God wants to help us and even bless us specially. Too often, we limit ourselves. Too often, we pray as if we’re confined in a closet. While that’s a good place to go for privacy, we’re not supposed to confine ourselves spiritually, and most often we do. We set limits. We believe only to a point. We restrain the blessings God may have in store for us!

This was the message years ago a little new book. It shouldn’t be used for self-centeredness or materialism; it is a message of inspiration to better faith and more direct communication (in the name of Jesus) with God. We need to open up. We need to think big. There’s no time to limit what we need to do for God, and that’s the message: that when we’re working for Jesus, when we’re seeking to do His will, He will bless us specially, He’ll help us accomplish the impossible, He’ll expand our territory — often in a way that’s miraculous.

So too is this true in our daily struggles. There is no use allowing yourself to be oppressed by daily life. There is the need to rise above it. When we have problems, when we feel down, we need to pray as if we know we will be heard and we know that if it’s right for us (if it’s correct in the larger picture only the Lord can see), God will grant it. If we are called to suffer, we transcend it by suffering in the holiness of deep prayer.

Don’t be afraid (John 16:24) to ask. Ask beyond what you normally expect. God loves our requests. It honors Him. He loves to bless. But we have to ask and all of us should do that every day: ask for better and bigger blessings and better and bigger ways of serving and living His glory here on earth and then forever!

–MHB

[resources: A Life of Blessings and Catholic House Blessings and Prayers]