Quotes About Reflection

Get in the Word until the Word gets in you. Cast down evil imaginations.

Pruning includes purging the wrong thinking, the negative attitudes, and the wrong people that surround you.

Redemption is overrated.

How did you know that what you sought was redemption and not righteous vengeance?

Many things have been said about what happened, but I don't know either. Maybe someday. One thing I'm sure of is that all the things that have happened to me, good and bad, happy and sad, have made me what I am today.

Drinking responsibly' doesn't have to mean not drinking enough. It can mean having a bit of self-respect, a bigger, better laugh while you're drinking and a clearer memory of it the next morning. Maybe

A newspaper story, like anything else, is more attractive from a distance, when it first comes to you, than it is when you get in close and agonize over the details. Which I presume is how Yardley got in the habit of keeping himself at a distance.

without moving a muscle in his face, slips away; retreats, I think, to that sheltered place where his stories are kept. Perhaps we all have our places.

The best way to start praying, therefore, is actually to stop praying. To pause. To be still. To put down your prayer list and surrender your own personal agenda. To stop talking at God long enough to focus on the wonder of who he actually is. To 'be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him'.

Archbishop Justin Welby says, the Lord's Prayer is 'simple enough to be memorised by small children, and yet profound enough to sustain a whole lifetime of prayer'.6

See Toolshed: How to Fast.)

I am convinced, however, that our constant activity is fruitless without first making that humble act of kneeling to pray. I am convinced that prayer is not only our greatest privilege, but also our greatest source of power.

Norman Wirzba writes, "The extent and depth of our Sabbath commitment is the measure of how far we have progressed in our discipleship and friendship with God.

Zinzendorf. . .asked God to remind him of Christ's suffering whenever he might be inclined to wander away from his first love.

The most powerful thing that can happen in the place of prayer is that you yourself become the prayer. You leave the prayer room as Jesus's hands and feet on earth. This is what it means to pray continually: to see with the eyes of Jesus and to hear with his ears with every waking moment.

Rob's story reminds me that how we listen is sometimes (always?) more important than what is said. Maybe that's why Jesus was forever asking people if they had ears to hear what he was saying. And I suspect it's also why the very first word of the great Benedictine Rule, which has guided monastic communities for 1,500 years, is this one little word: listen. Fifteen centuries of successful community built on the power of mere listening.

If we hurry into the holy without preparing our hearts, we will see things not as they are but as we are.

There's little point in lectio divina without the Holy Spirit's help.

by stopping to be still in the ways described above, prior to opening my Bible, I can prime my heart to hear from God in a focused way with far fewer distractions.

Even worship is less important than Jesus. In fact, worship can become an idol in the church. Some Christians probably worship worship more than they worship Jesus. Some worship leaders probably worship worship-leading more than they worship Jesus. It was never meant to be an industry, a genre in Walmart, a karaoke show on Sunday. If you really want to lead worship, learn to wonder.

He looked at her for a long moment, as if remembering unfinished conversations, and then went back to place some damp, slow-burning turf on the fire.

Human beings write stories, and read them, for the same good reason: to live

I urged myself to live in a state of complete consciousness, even when that meant pain or boredom." - Pete Hamill.

You lived in the present, but that present always contained a past, some image of a ruined paradise.