O God, I Need Thee
This prayer is being featured for three weeks. This is the third section.

I Need Thy Sense of the Future
  Teach me to know that life is ever
  On the side of the future.
  Keep alive in me the forward look, the high hope,
  The onward surge. Let me not be frozen
  Either by the past or the present.
  Grant me, O patient Father, Thy sense of the future
  Without which all life would sicken and die.

—   Howard Thurman  (1951)
Conversations with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans, James Melvin Washington, Ph.D. Editor, 1994

Howard Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an American theologian, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements of the twentieth century. He was the author of many books including Jesus and the Disinherited, 1949.

James Melvin Washington was an expert on Black American religious history, an educator, and a minister from Knoxville, Tennessee. He published Frustrated Fellowship: The Black Baptist Quest for Social Power, in 1986.