Thought for the Day

Hope is a projection of the imagination; so is despair. Despair all too readily embraces the ills it foresees; hope is an energy and arouses the mind to explore every possibility to combat them...In response to hope the imagination is aroused to picture every possible issue, to try every door, to fit together even the most heterogeneous pieces in the puzzle. After the solution has been found it is difficult to recall the steps taken--so many of them are just below the level of consciousness.
--Thornton Wilder

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Thought for the Day

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.
--G. K. Chesterton

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Thought for the Day

The first great fact which emerges from our civilization is that today everything has become "means." There is no longer an "end"; we do no know whither we are going. We have forgotten our collective ends, and we possess great means: we set huge machines in motion in order to arrive nowhere.
--Jacques Ellul

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Prayer for Ash Wednesday

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Thought for the Day

No literature is more realistic and honest in facing the harsh facts of life than the Bible. At no time is there the faintest suggestion that the life of faith exempts us from difficulties. What it promises is preservation from all the evil in them.
--Eugene Peterson

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Thought for the Day

The essential thing "in heaven and earth" is...that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

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Thought for the Day

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.
--Eugene Peterson

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Sunday's Prayer

O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Thought for the Day

Blessings are what God bestows upon us, continually. is whole action towards us is blessing, from the blessing of life itself to the gifts He showers upon us. The great blessings are the gift of Himself, and the gift of eternal life No blessing is ours by right, but in His love He offers them to us all freely. Grace is the free action of God to us. What we are asked to do is to respond to allow the blessing to work, and to see God at work in our lives.
--David Adam

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Thought for the Day

One of the best preparations for prayer is relaxation. We need to learn to be still in body, mind and spirit, to let go of the tensions of our lives. We need to heed the words, 'Be still and know that I am God.'
--David Adam

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Thought for the Day

Paradoxically, a widespread decline in traditional religious practice in the West runs parallel with an ever-increasing hunger for spirituality. The question at the forefront of most of the great spiritual classics used to be "What or who is God?" Nowadays the characteristic question of the contemporary spiritual seeker is more likely to be "Who am I?" Great Christian teachers of the past such as Julian of Norwich understood quite clearly that these two questions are inextricably linked.
--Philip Sheldrake

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Thought for the Day

The work of philosophers and historians of science in the present century has shown very clearly that the whole work of modern science rests on faith-commitments which cannot themselves be demonstrated by the methods of science...The development of science as we know it would have been impossible without two beliefs: that the universe is rational and that it is contingent.
--Lesslie Newbigin

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Thought for the Day

The heart of biblical and ancient Christian spirituality is our mystical union with God accomplished by Jesus Christ through the Spirit. God unites with humanity in his saving incarnation, death, and resurrection. We unite with God as we receive his new life within us. Christian spirituality then, simply put, is God's passionate embrace of us; our passionate embrace of God.
--Robert E. Webber

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Thought for the Day

God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is Love. It maybe that He loves all equally--He certainly loved all to the death--and I am not certain what the expression means. If there is equality, it is in His love, not in us.
--C. S. Lewis

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Sunday's Prayer

You are holy, Lord, the only God,
You do wonders.

You are strong, you are great,
You are the most high.
You are the almighty King.
Holy, Holy Father, the King of heaven and earth.

You are Three and One, Lord God of gods;
You are good, all good, the highest good,
Lord, God, living and true.
You are love, charity.
You are wisdom;
You are humility;
You are patience;
You are beauty;
You are meekness;
You are security;
You are inner peace;
You are joy;
You are our hope and joy;
You are justice;
You are moderation
You are all our riches;
You are enough for us.

You are beauty, you are meekness;
You are the protector,
You are our guardian and defender;
You are strength, you are refreshment.

You are our hope, you are our faith,
You are our charity,
You are all our sweetness,
You are our eternal life:
Great and wonderful Lord,
God almighty, Merciful Saviour.
--St. Francis of Assisi

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Thought for the Day

To forgive sins is divine not only in the sense that no one is able to do it except God, but also because no one can do it without God.
--Soren Kierkegaard

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Thought for the Day

If I, even for a moment, accept my culture's definition of me, I am rendered harmless.
--Eugene Peterson

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Thought for the Day

The universe is not a waif and life is not a derelict. Man is neither the lord of the universe nor even the master of his own destiny. Our life is not our own property but a possession of God. And it is this divine ownership that makes life a sacred thing.
--Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Thought for the Day

Our membership in the church is a corollary of our faith in Christ. We can no more be a Christian and have nothing to do with the church than we can be a person and not be in a family...It is part of the fabric of redemption.
--Eugene Peterson

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Thought for the Day

Tradition is meant to be a servant of the present and the future, not a tyrant imposing its own preferences on a very different world.
--Michael Casey

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Thought for the Day

Water can wear away rock, but it needs time as its ally. God's word will certainly refashion our lives, but not overnight. The process begins from the center and works outward; its results will not be apparent on the surface for a very long time. Meanwhile, we have to accept and submit to the vagaries of this invisible process without losing heart or abandoning our sense of purpose.
--Michael Casey

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Sunday's Prayer

My dearest Lord,
Be thou a bright flame before me
Be thou a guiding star above me
Be thou a smooth path beneath me
Be thou a kindly shepherd behind me
Today and for evermore.
--St. Columba (521-597)

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Thought for the Day

But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.
--C. S. Lewis

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Thought for the Day

The earthly minded person thinks and imagines that when he prays, the important thing, that thing he must concentrate upon, is that God should hear what he is praying for. And yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the reverse: the true relation in prayer is not when God hears what is prayed for, but when the person praying continues to pray until he is the one who hears who hears what God is asking for.
--Soren Kierkegaard

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Thought for the Day

Spirituality is a personal relationship to God that pertains to all of life.
--Robert E. Webber

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Thought for the Day

For the follower of Jesus, discipleship is not the first step toward a promising career. It is itself the fulfillment of his or her destiny. We never move from being a disciple on-the-way.
--Alan Hirsch

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Thought for the Day

Lord, may your grace help me to want what you want, to prefer what you prefer.
--Dom Helder Camara

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Thought for the Day

The question Christ pose to the world is whether it is invested in God's reign. The question he poses to his disciples is whether they have the patience to keep posing it.
--Telford Work

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Sunday's Prayer

Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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