‘Do not impose today’s worry upon tomorrow’

Odette Prévost was a French nun who had joined the Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart at age 21, in 1953.

She spent her lifetime working in Morocco and Algeria, living and serving among acutely poor communities.

She studied Arabic and helped educate women and provided free tutoring for children to help them with their school work. She also organised games and provided nutritious food to help ensure a more healthy diet.

In the mid-1990s, she was warned to leave Algeria due to the rise of religious violence. She refused to leave, choosing to remain in solidarity with the people she served as a way of ‘resistance’ to the chaos and bloodshed.

On 10 November 1995 she went with another sister to attend mass when an Islamist terrorist came out of a car and shot her at point blank range. Prévost died instantly and her friend was seriously injured.

This prayer, composed by Prévost, was found on her after her death:

Live today’s day. God gives it to you, it belongs to you. Live it in Him.

Tomorrow’s day belongs to God, it doesn’t belong to you. Do not impose today’s worry upon tomorrow. Tomorrow belongs to God. Hand it over to Him.

The present moment is a frail footbridge. If you weigh it down with yesterday’s regrets, tomorrow’s anxiety, the footbridge gives way and you lose your footing.

The past? God forgives it. The future? God gives it. Live today’s day in communion with Him.

Amen.

---

Thanks to my colleague Stephen Brown who shared this prayer at today’s staff prayers at Hope into Action