"Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks"

A subtle but radical shift in desire is being urged: not fewer burdens, but broader shoulders; not a trimmed horizon, but a heart and mind expanded to meet what awaits. The focus moves from engineering a safer, smaller life to cultivating the inner resources that can honor large responsibilities. Life regularly presents callings that exceed current capacity. The wiser response is not to bargain the calling down, but to grow up into it, courage, patience, wisdom, and love becoming the real measures of strength.

Such a prayer is the opposite of bravado. It begins with honest humility: I am not yet equal to the work before me. Yet it refuses resignation. It asks to be transformed rather than excused, to be equipped rather than sheltered. Prayer here is not a way out but a way through, an alignment of will with purpose, a willingness to be shaped by duty into character. Growth is moral, not merely technical: fortitude under strain, discernment amid ambiguity, perseverance without bitterness.

Applied to daily life, the posture is practical. In leadership, do not wish for simpler markets but for clearer judgment and steadier nerves. In study, not an easier exam but a sharper mind. In relationships, not partners without rough edges but deeper empathy and patience. In justice work, not a world instantly set right but stamina to labor faithfully over time.

There is a warning against the addiction to comfort: shrinking tasks shrinks the soul. Asking for greater powers enlarges our world and our usefulness. The power envisioned is not domination but capacity, the ability to carry responsibility with grace: clarity in noise, charity under provocation, imagination at dead ends. Such powers are both gift and practice, born of effort, community, and grace.

Ultimately, tasks become invitations to become larger selves. As we grow, the burdens do not vanish; we outgrow them. The prayer becomes a commitment: to train, to endure, to be remade, until our powers genuinely match our callings.