The ability to calm your soul and wait before God is one of the most difficult things in the Christian life. Our old nature is restless... the world around us is frantically in a hurry. But a restless heart usually leads to a reckless life.
Interpretation
Practicing patience and calmness is challenging but essential for a thoughtful life.
This quote emphasizes the struggle many face in maintaining inner peace and patience in a fast-paced, chaotic world. It suggests that a lack of calmness can lead to hasty decisions and a life lacking in purpose and thoughtfulness, highlighting the importance of taking time to reflect and connect spiritually.
In practice
In a sermon on mindfulness, one might reflect on this quote to encourage the congregation to take time for spiritual reflection.
Nothing paralyzes our lives like the attitude that things can never change. We need to remind ourselves that God can change things. Outlook determines outcome. If we see only the problems, we will be defeated; but if we see the possibilities in the problems, we can have victory.
If you are going to live by faith, then expect your faith to be tested. A faith that can't be tested can't be trusted.
People who walk by faith don't see obstacles, they see opportunities.
Hypocrisy means deliberately pretending. None of us lives up to his ideals; none of us is all that he would like to be or all that he could be in Christ. But that is not hypocrisy. Falling short of our ideals is not hypocrisy. Pretending we have reached our ideals when we have not - that is hypocrisy.
We have little control over the circumstances of life. We can't control the weather or the economy, and we can't control what other people say about or do to us. There is only one area where we have control--we can rule the kingdom inside. The heart of every problem is the problem in the heart.
When you and I hurt deeply, what we really need is not an explanation from God but a revelation of God. We need to see how great God is; we need to recover our lost perspective on life. Things get out of proportion when we are suffering, and it takes a vision of something bigger than ourselves to get life's dimensions adjusted again
Prayer requires that we stand in God's presence with open hands, naked and vulnerable, proclaiming to ourselves and to others that without God we can do nothing. As disciples, we find not some but all of our strength, hope, courage, and confidence in God. Therefore, prayer must be our first concern.
You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.
One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.
The calm man is not the man who is dull. You must not mistake Sattva for dullness or laziness. The calm man is the one who has control over the mind waves. Activity is the manifestation of inferior strength, calmness, of the superior.
Everybody has losses - it's unavoidable in life. Sharing our pain is very healing.
From the highest god to the meanest grass, the same power is present in all - whether manifested or not. We shall have to call forth that power by going from door to door.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.