First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, wife to President Franklin Roosevelt, was a strong leader, politician and justice-advocate. She was the chair of the first UN Commission on Human Rights and oversaw the creation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You can read more about that process in A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
This prayer is her nightly prayer and I find it to be an inspirational reflection as we strive to live for Christ in the world.
Our Father, who has set a restlessness in our hearts and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength. Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new.
