We should not bear it with bad grace if the answer to our prayer is long delayed. Rather, let us, because of this, show great patience and resignation. For He delays for this reason: that we may offer Him a fitting occasion of honoring us through His divine providence.
Interpretation
Patience in the face of delayed prayers can lead to greater blessings.
This quote by Saint John Chrysostom emphasizes the importance of patience and acceptance when prayers are not answered immediately. The underlying message is that delays may be part of a divine plan, providing us with opportunities to demonstrate our faith and ultimately to receive greater blessings through God's providence.
In practice
During a sermon on trusting divine timing, one might quote this to encourage the congregation to practice patience.
No one has ever been accused for not providing ornaments, but for those who neglect their neighbour a hell awaits with an inextinguishable fire and torment in the company of the demons. Do not, therefore, adorn the church and ignore your afflicted brother, for he is the most precious temple of all.
It is simply impossible to lead, without the aid of prayer, a virtuous life.
When we teach our children to be good, to be gentle, to be forgiving (all these are attributes of God), to be generous, to love their follow men, to regard this present age as nothing, we instill virtue in their souls, and reveal the image of God within them.
Abba Moses asked Abba Sylvanus, Can a person lay a new foundation every day? The old man replied, If you work hard, you can lay a new foundation every moment. Abba Pimen said, To throw yourself before God, not to measure your progress, to leave behind all self-will; these are the instruments for the work of the soul. The desire to rule is the mother of heresies.
I hear no one boast, that he hath a knowledge of the Scriptures, but that he owneth a Bible written in golden characters. And tell me then, what profiteth this? The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books, but that we should engrave them upon our hearts.
Prayer should be the means by which I, at all times, receive all that I need, and, for this reason, be my daily refuge, my daily consolation, my daily joy, my source of rich and inexhaustible joy in life.
Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in his beauty deigns to walk.
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.
As a reader and a writer, I'm happiest when apparently mutually exclusive states can somehow coexist.
If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.
Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.
The wise man puts himself last and finds himself first.
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