God's signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his purposes are not always our own. Yet the prayers of private suffering, whether in our homes or in this great cathedral, are known and heard, and understood.
The purpose of prayer is not to change God's mind, which always knows your wholeness and your deservingness. The purpose of prayer is to change your mind so you can see through the eyes of God.
"Americans do not presume to equate God's purposes with any purpose of our own...."[Prayer] teaches us to trust, to accept that God's plan unfolds in his time, not our own.
When a golden girl can win Prayer from out the lips of sin, When the barren almond bears, And a little child gives away its tears, Then shall all the house be still And peace come to Canterville.
Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration.
The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.
What can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!
Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poeticyouth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.
One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words. We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken. We cannot approach the spirit unless we repair the vessels. Reverence for words - an awareness of the wonder of words, of the mystery of words - is an essential prerequisite for prayer. By the word of God the world was created.
The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.
So I went in front of the judge, and I had my St. Jude prayer book in my pocket and my St. Jude medal. And I'm standing there and that judge said I was found guilty, so he sentenced me to what the law prescribed: one to 14 years.
Let us make of our homes sanctuaries of righteousness, places of prayer, and abodes of love, that we might merit the blessings that can come only from our Heavenly Father.
Riches I hold in light esteem, And love I laugh to scorn, And lust of fame was but a dream That vanished with the morn. And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!' Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'Tis all that I implore - In life and death, a chainless soul, With courage to endure.