Youth Ministry Initiative

Anthology: Book

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From Evelyn Underhill, A Guide to Prayer, The Spiritual Life" at page 320:

“Any spiritual view which focuses attention on ourselves, and puts the human creature with its small ideas and adventures in the centre foreground, is dangerous till we recognize its absurdity. …We mostly spend those lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual – even on the religious – plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life.”

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1955

From Paul Tillich, The New Being, (1955):

It is God Himself who prays through us, when we pray to Him. …We cannot bridge the gap between God and ourselves even through the most intensive and frequent prayers, the gap between ourselves and God can only be bridged by God.”

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2001

From Simone Weil, Waiting for God (January 1, 2001):

The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of attention counts much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.”

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1626

From John Donne, Donne's Sermons, Imperfect Prayers", (December 12, 1626) at page 4:

“But when we consider with a religious seriousness the manifold weaknesses of the strongest devotions in time of Prayer, it is a sad consideration. I throw my self down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of Flie, for the ratling of a Coach, for the whining of a doore; I talke on, in the same posture of praying; eyes lifted up; knees bowed downe; as though I prayed to God; and, if God, or his Angels should aske me, when I thought last of God in that prayer, I cannot tell: Sometimes I finde that I had forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it, I cannot tell. A memory of yesterdays pleasures, a feare of tomorrows dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine eare, a light in mine eye, an any thing, a nothing, a fancy, a Chimera in my braine, trouble me in my prayer. So certainely is there nothing, nothing in spirituall things, perfect in this world.”

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1675

From Thomas Shadwell, Psyche, Act 3, (1675):

Words may be false and full of art, Sighs are the natural language of the heart.”

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1647

From John Herrick, The Heart (1647):

In prayer the lips ne’er act the winning part, without the secret concurrence of the the heart.”

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From Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, Act 2:

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

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1946

From R. A. Knox, Retreat for Priests (1946):

The real tragedy of our prayers is not that God so often refuses to grant them. The tragedy is we so often ask for the wrong thing.”

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1870

From Thomas Carlye, Letter to G. A. Duncan, (June 9, 1870):

Prayer is and remains always a native and deepest impulse of the soul of man.1870

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From Matthew 21:21:

[After Jesus withers a fig tree] Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, be lifted up and thrown into the sea, it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.

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