Teach me to know that life is ever

On the side of the future.

Keep alive in me the forward look, the high hope,

The onward surge. Let me not be frozen

Either by the past or the present.

Grant me, O patient Father, Your sense of the future

Without which all life would sicken and die.

– From Deep Is the Hunger by Howard Thurman (found in The Upper Room’s A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, p. 217)