I log on to the Internet late at night to play chess. In between moves, I check my e-mail, read the news, and think. It’s quiet here at the end of the day. But peering through computer screen — mystical aperture — brings close the noisy conflict of a war-torn world.

Hamas vows vengeance. Warnings of a terrorist attack. 127 New York passengers injured when one train bumps another. A boy who died in an oven.

My life seems small.

I pray that God will use what I have, that I might be a harbor of peace and a vessel filled from streams of living water. I pray that I might be a friend to the afflicted, a living message of hope. I know I have no such store of good things for I, too, am impoverished. But I pray.

And I remember His words: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed . . . nothing will be impossible for you.”

I pray for change.

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