You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the divine can be found in the world and in love rather than solely in religious institutions.
Shams Tabrizi emphasizes the idea that God is present in everything and everyone, transcending traditional religious boundaries. Instead of limiting the divine to places of worship, he suggests that the true understanding of God can be found in the love and hearts of genuine lovers, indicating that love itself is a manifestation of the divine.
In practice
In a discussion about spirituality, one might reference this quote to highlight the idea that love is a path to understanding the divine.
God is busy with the completion of your work, both outwardly and inwardly. He is fully occupied with you. Every human being is a work in progress that is slowly but inexplicably moving toward perfection. We are each an unfinished work of art both waiting and striving to be completed. God deals with each of us separately because humanity is a fine art of skilled penmanship where every single dot is equally important for the entire picture.
Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighbourhood of despair. Even when all doors remained closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied.
If you are insulted, if you are accused, if they gossip about you, don't say anything bad. Don't be the one who sees the shame, be the one who corrects it.
Be sure that someday you'll praise and thank God for your unanswered prayers that once you had wept for them.
Remove all the walls and curtains so you can get closer and purely love. Have principles but do not use them to exclude or to judge the others. Stay far from idols, specially from those you made from your own principles. Have a powerful faith, but do not play the powerful.
If you look around, you can find a face of God in each thing, because He is not hidden in a church, in a mosque, or a synagogue, but everywhere. As there is no one who lives after seeing him, there is also no one dying after seeing him. Who finds Him, stays forever with him.
The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog.
In Christian terms, evangelization and humanization are not alternatives. Nor are the 'vertical dimension' of faith and the 'horizontal dimension' of love for one's neighbor and political change.
Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.
If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.
If you will not have death unto sin, you shall have sin unto death. There is no alternative. If you do not die to sin, you shall die for sin. If you do not slay sin, sin will slay you.
What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.
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