I am a person of faith, but I am not writing this book only for people of faith. I am writing it for anyone who has ever opened their eyes in the morning and wondered whether there was a reason to keep them open. If you pray, I think you will find a friend in these pages. If you have given up on prayer, never started, or suspect the whole enterprise is a conversation with an empty room, I think you will find a friend here too. The question this book asks is not, finally, a religious question. It is a human question. It is the most human question there is: Is it worth it? Is any of it worth it? Is there anything on the other side of this night worth getting up for? My answer is yes. But I do not want to give you my answer. I want to give you yours. Or, more precisely, I want to help you find it. It may be in a place you have not thought to look, which is almost certainly where it is, because that is how these things work. The treasure is buried in the field, the coin is lost under the furniture, and the sheep is in the ravine where nobody thought to search. The reasons to get up tomorrow morning are, I suspect, already somewhere in your life, hiding in plain sight, waiting for you to trip over them. So here is what I propose. Let us walk together for a while. I will tell you what I have seen, and you can decide for yourself whether any of it is true. I will not raise my voice. I will not wag my finger. I will try to be honest about the times I have failed to get up, gotten up for the wrong reasons, or gotten up and wished I hadn't. And maybe, somewhere along the way, in the space between my words and your reading of them, something will stir. Not a feeling, exactly. Something more like a recognition. Something more like the moment just before dawn, when the darkness is still the darkness but is no longer quite as sure of itself. That is all I am after. That small, stubborn crack in the dark. - The Author
