My failure to be true even to my own accepted standards:
My self-deception in face of temptation:
My choosing of the worse when I know the better:
O Lord, forgive.
My failure to apply to myself the standards of conduct I demand of others:
My blindness to the suffering of others and my slowness to be taught by my own:
My complacence towards wrongs that do not touch my own case and my over-sensitiveness to those that do:
My slowness to see the good in my fellows and to see the evil in myself:
My hardness of heart towards my neighbor’s faults and my readiness to make allowance for my own:
My unwillingness to believe that Thou hast called me to a small work and my brother to a great one:
O Lord, forgive.
Amen.
“A Diary of Private Prayer” by John Baillie
