\chapter*{Foreword}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Foreword}

\noindent I didn't set out to write a hundred and one prayers. 
I set out to write the ones I needed and couldn't find --- 
short enough to pray before the day got away, 
plain enough to skip churchy language.

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\noindent It didn't take long to notice a pattern: 
every prayer 
rhymed with something a psalmist had already said three thousand years ago. 
Weariness, wonder, gratitude, grief --- none of it is new.

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\noindent This book borrows their voice. 
Each prayer opens with a verse from the Psalms and stays close to it, 
but with present-day concerns --- a hospital wristband, plastic bins after a storm. 
A prayer too general, ``Lord, help me in my trouble,'' rarely moves anyone; 
it asks for nothing you can wrap your hands around. 
But one too specific runs a different risk: what if your trouble doesn't look like mine?

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\noindent So hold these loosely. Think of them less as a script 
and more as an aperture --- a way of opening your imagination onto something 
you already recognize. Let your words take over where mine leave off.

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\noindent Scripture quotations are drawn from the \textit{World English Bible}, 
a public domain translation, with one adjustment: 
I've used the traditional ``the LORD'' in place of the divine name ``Yahweh,'' 
since it's what most of us are used to.

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\noindent Wherever you are today --- weary, waiting, grateful, undone --- 
my prayer is that you'll find something here that meets you where you are.

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\noindent \textit{George Marin}