Be creative in that sense and your creativity will become an offering to God. God has given you so many gifts, Garima; something HAS to be done just in deep thankfulness. But remember: with no motive, not as a means but as an end unto itself. Art for art's sake, and creation for creation's sake, and love for love's sake, and prayer for prayer's sake.
The heavens, with their everlasting faithfulness, look down on no sadder contradiction than the sluggard and the slattern in their prayers.
We need to learn to know Him so well that we feel safe when we have left our difficulties with Him. To know in that way is a prerequisite of all true prayer.
I wondered if there was a way to teach people how to use their imaginations in prayer and worship. So I began reading books on cognitive therapy and neuroscience and started studying the devotional traditions of the church.
Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.
Prayers will never reach God unless they are founded on free mercy.
Even if one is familiar with the precise meaning of everything one recites, the act of worship can hardly have any significance at all unless it registers the overall message each part of our prayers is meant to convey.
There is enough sin in my best prayer to send the whole world to Hell.
I've found that prayers work best when you have big players.
Prayer does not mean asking God for all kinds of things we want, it is rather the desire for God Himself, the only Giver of Life.
We do not drift into spiritual life or disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray.
Prayer, like faith, obtains promises, enlarges their operation, and adds to the measure of their results.
Just as a prayer may be merely a mechanical intonation as of a bird, so may a fast be a mere mechanical torture of the flesh.
I prefer a kind of sweet, deep, rich prayer in which a person goes in and says, Take me down deep into the reason you gave me life. Take me down deep. It silences the chaos in me.
Let your thoughts be psalms, your prayers incense, and your breath praise.
Accustom yourself gradually to carry Prayer into all your daily occupation - speak, act, work in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be.
If yon bethink yourself of any crime Unreconcil'd as yet to heaven and grace, Solicit for it straight.
Say a prayer for the lost generation, who spin the wheel out of desperation.
Your heart is not the compass that God steers by.
Prayer is an ordinance of God, that must continue with a soul so long as it is on this side glory.