Here's My Heart, Here's My Hand

Book excerpt: How do we foster a friendship with God and remain in it forever? It’s a difficult enough proposition for many people to believe that God—eternal, unchanging, all-knowing—could actually desire a relationship with them. But once they’ve accepted the premise that God indeed does want their friendship, it can be even more challenging to think about how to actually engage in that friendship, foster it, and remain anchored in it when life’s storms toss them about. In Here’s My Heart, Here’s My Hand, veteran spiritual director William A. Barry, SJ, helps us understand how we can experience a personal, lasting relationship with God and what effects that close relationship will have on our lives. Written in a warm, conversational tone, this book is a collection of nearly twenty of the finest previously published articles Fr. Barry has written on the subject of friendship with God. The selections are diverse in their overall themes—from discerning God’s will for our lives to forgiving as Jesus forgives—but each one shares the common thread of helping us see prayer as the way to a conscious, lifelong relationship with God.