Part of the reason for the name of this blog is because prayer or the active tense, praying solicits a conversation between us and God. It is the ONE THING Jesus' disciples ask for him to teach them. Over the years I have collected many thoughts about prayer. Here are some of those reflections.
* As an act of love, prayer is a courageous act. It is a risk we take. It is a life-and-death risk, believing in the promises of the gospel, that God's love is indeed operative in the world. In prayer we have the courage, perhaps even the presumption and the arrogance or the audacity to claim that God's love can be operative in the very specific situations of human need that we encounter. -- John E. Biersdorf -- excerpt from Healing of Purpose
*"The testing of Christian speech is prayer" - Stanley Hauerwas
*"Prayer is a participation in willing God’s will." - Marjorie J. Thompson
* The art of praying, as we grow, is really the art of learning to waste time gracefully—to be simply the clay in the hands of the potter. This may sound easy—too easy to be true—but it is really the most difficult thing we ever learn to do.... This is the real reason why so few of us ever come, in this life, to the full experience of God’s love for us.- Thomas H. Green from When the Well Runs Dry
* "To be a Christian is to let yourself be pulled by Christ into a completely different quality of time and space, one produced by his infinitely loving death and its raising up by God to life. -Tony Bartlett, Virtually Christian
* ". . . The contemplative does not pray in order to coax satisfaction out of the universe. God is life, not a vending machine full of trifles to fit the whims of the human race God is the end of life, the fulfillment of life, the essence of life, the comng of life. The contemplative prays in order to be open to what is, rather than to reshape the world to their own lesser designs." - Sr. Joan Chittister
AND MY FAVORITE
* "There are two basic forms of prayer, everything else is addition: Help, Help, Help, and Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!" - Professor Hans Van Den Blink
Here's to continued praying attention and all that stuff - Pastor Andy
* As an act of love, prayer is a courageous act. It is a risk we take. It is a life-and-death risk, believing in the promises of the gospel, that God's love is indeed operative in the world. In prayer we have the courage, perhaps even the presumption and the arrogance or the audacity to claim that God's love can be operative in the very specific situations of human need that we encounter. -- John E. Biersdorf -- excerpt from Healing of Purpose
*"The testing of Christian speech is prayer" - Stanley Hauerwas
*"Prayer is a participation in willing God’s will." - Marjorie J. Thompson
* The art of praying, as we grow, is really the art of learning to waste time gracefully—to be simply the clay in the hands of the potter. This may sound easy—too easy to be true—but it is really the most difficult thing we ever learn to do.... This is the real reason why so few of us ever come, in this life, to the full experience of God’s love for us.- Thomas H. Green from When the Well Runs Dry
* "To be a Christian is to let yourself be pulled by Christ into a completely different quality of time and space, one produced by his infinitely loving death and its raising up by God to life. -Tony Bartlett, Virtually Christian
* ". . . The contemplative does not pray in order to coax satisfaction out of the universe. God is life, not a vending machine full of trifles to fit the whims of the human race God is the end of life, the fulfillment of life, the essence of life, the comng of life. The contemplative prays in order to be open to what is, rather than to reshape the world to their own lesser designs." - Sr. Joan Chittister
AND MY FAVORITE
* "There are two basic forms of prayer, everything else is addition: Help, Help, Help, and Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!" - Professor Hans Van Den Blink
Here's to continued praying attention and all that stuff - Pastor Andy
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