#Prayer

"Even the smallest shift in perspective can bring about the greatest healing."

"I could watch him do this until morning — never asking questions and never interrupting his work. I worship quietly — his intense focus and attention to detail and then, out of no where, I realize the inconvenient, inappropriate truth: ‘I love this man… and it has swallowed me."

"I fantasize the night sky to be like a cosmic blue print of my life as I close my eyes and unbutton my heart…. just in case anyone up there is listening."

"Lord, when I feel that what I'm doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it."

"Let us never forget to pray. God lives. He is near. He is real. He is not only aware of us but cares for us. He is our Father. He is accessible to all who will seek Him."

"Are we alone? Over time, you will come up with various answers to that same nagging question. Eventually one day it will occur to you that this endless asking is the answer you have been looking for. The fact that we have an ongoing dialogue with the universe is proof enough that there is "something"out there."

"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.[Quoting Reverend Phillips Brooks, during Remarks at Presidential Prayer Breakfast, February 7 1963]"

"Go where your best prayers take you."

"The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies."

"When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand."

"We tend to be preoccupied by our problems when we have a heightened sense of vulnerability and a diminished sense of power. Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer."

"God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden... The best gift of the desert is God's presence... The protective love of the Shepherd gives me courage to face the interior journey."

"I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal."

"Give me the Love that leads the wayThe Faith that nothing can dismayThe Hope no disappointments tireThe Passion that'll burn like fireLet me not sink to be a clodMake me Thy fuel, Flame of God"

"I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself — my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders."

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."

"The joy which answers to prayer give, cannot be described; and the impetus which they afford to the spiritual life is exceedingly great."

"Prayers are to men as dolls are to children."

"As prayer without faith is but a beating of the air, so trust without prayer [is] but a presumptuous bravado. He that promises to give, and bids us trust His promises, commands us to pray, and expects obedience to his commands. He will give, but not without our asking."

"Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love."