When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my own country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.
Unknown
As long as we look for some kind of pay for what we do, as long as we want to get something from God in some kind of exchange, we are like the merchants. If you want to be rid of the commerical spirit, then by all means do all you can in the way of good works, but do so solely for the praise of God. Live as if you did not exist. Expect and ask nothing in return. Then the merchant inside you will be driven out of the temple God has made. Then God alone dwells there. See! This is how the temple is cleared: when a person thinks only of God and honors God alone. Only such a person is free and genuine.
Good for the body is the work of the body,
good for the soul is the work of the soul, and
good for either is the work of the other.
Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of thee; thou only knowest my need.... I simply present myself before thee, I open my heart to thee. Behold my needs which I know not myself. Smite, or heal; depress me, or raise me up; I adore all thy purposes without knowing them; I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice; I yield myself to thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy Will. Teach me to pray. Pray thyself in me. Amen.
With a single note the nightingale
Makes me notice the rose,
Falling into that place
Where everything is music
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability--and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually--let them grow,
Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
It's ok to remove a fly from a friend's forehead, but don't use a hatchet.
God is at home.
We are in the far country.