Today's 4thdayletter marks a major milestone. This is the 100th 4thdayletter. In September of 2011 God put it on my heart to write an inspirational message to 15 Catholic men in Western North Carolina. Now, 4thdayletters is being read around the world, and it is being read by Christian's of many, many different denominations and many non-Christians as well. Each and every one of you is important to this ministry. It never entered my mind on that first day that God was planning this email ministry to grow like this. God is awesome!

The 55th 4thdayletter was of particular importance to me. It was called "The Broken Door" and it is the only one of the 4thdayletters that came to my heart in a parable. It moved me to form a new ministry called Broken Door Ministries. I will tell you much more about it over the next few weeks as we approach the second anniversary of 4thdayletters on September 21st.

 One of the main purposes of Broken Door Ministries is to share the message from the Broken Door Parable and deliver it in a 4 hour Retreat format. This past weekend Broken Door Ministries had the blessing of providing this retreat to Precious Blood of Christ Parish in Pawley's Island, South Carolina. To Fr. Pat the Pastor and all those who attended the retreat, I thank you for allowing us to share our love of Jesus Christ with you. We all laughed, cried, and grew in our faith together.

I long for the opportunity to bring this message to all churches/parishes or other gathering. Would your community benefit from an inspirational message about God's freely given, unending and abundant mercy, about how to break the chains that bind us and how to remove the masks that keep us from being the true person God calls us to be and finally a retreat that closes with thoughts on how we can all respond to God's individual call in our life? Email me and let's schedule a retreat for your group.

Every week I pray daily and then wait for God to touch my heart on something to share with you. I never know how, where or when during the week God will inspire me with a message to write on. Today's message came to me during a song at Sunday's mass. As soon as I began to sing this song I got choked up and tears began to fall. I knew I had to share this with you. I have sung this song many times before but the message resonated deep within me this time. Psalm 51:12 says this: "A clean heart create for me, God; renew within me a steadfast spirit". This song brought those words to life.

 After all of the topics I have written on and all the words I have shared, as I sang this song I thought these words summed up so much of our Christian faith. It seemed naturally fitting to be able to summarize so many previous thoughts on this one hundredth edition with just these few small verses. The name of the hymn is: "Open My Eyes Lord". Here are the Lyrics.

Open my eyes, Lord
Help me to see Your face
Open my eyes, Lord
Help me to see

Open my ears, Lord
Help me to hear Your voice
Open my ears, Lord
Help me to hear

Open my heart, Lord
Help me to love like You
Open my heart, Lord
Help me to love

I live within you
Deep in your heart, oh, love
I live within you
Rest now in me

At times our faith can seem daunting. There is so much to know, so much theology to study, so many good Christian books, so many books and passages in the Bible, and so many great sermons and homilies, but this time this song brought it all together for me. If it is God's plan and desire, I look forward to sharing the next 100 4thdayletters with you. I hope these lyrics touch you in their simplicity as they touched me.

 I love to hear back from you. Please take a quick moment and email me today by clicking here. Your responses and emails back to me after each 4thdayletter mean so very much. I have been blessed and inspired by your sharing.

Perhaps this is the prayer we should start every day with. It really is this simple.

Open my eyes Lord; I want to see your face. Open my ears Lord; I want to hear your voice. Open my heart Lord; I want to love like you. Come love of God, rest in my heart, Amen!

Continue to feel free to forward my emails to as many friends as you want and to look up past letters, all of them are archived here.