O God! if I worship Thee in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not thine everlasting beauty.
Interpretation
True worship should be motivated by a desire for the divine and not by fear or reward.
Rabia Basri's quote expresses the idea that genuine devotion to God should come from a pure longing for His presence and beauty, rather than from self-serving motives such as fear of punishment or desire for reward. It challenges followers to examine the authenticity of their worship and emphasizes the importance of worship grounded in love and appreciation of the divine nature.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of faith during a spiritual retreat.
Your prayers are your light; _x000D_ _x000D_ Your devotion is your strength;_x000D_ _x000D_ Sleep is the enemy of both. _x000D_ _x000D_ Your life is the only opportunity that life can give you._x000D_ _x000D_ If you ignore it, if you waste it,_x000D_ _x000D_ You will only turn to dust.
O Beloved of Hearts, I beseech only You. Have pity this day on those who turn to You. My Hope, my Rest, my Delight, this heart can love none other but You.
True devotion is for itself: not to desire heaven nor to fear hell.
Great doubt will eventually lead to great awakening.
How many gifts and graces You have given me! How many favors You have fed me from your hand! I look for your love in all directions, then suddenly its blessing burns in me.
Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure _x000D_ _x000D_ Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word_x000D_ _x000D_ My choicest hours_x000D_ _x000D_ Are the hours I spend with You -_x000D_ _x000D_ O God, I can't live in this world_x000D_ _x000D_ Without remembering You
Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I haste to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.
Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?" "I give." "You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.
Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.
Some writers may toy with the fancy of a ‘Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories.
I long for the simplicity of theatre. I want lessons learned, comeuppances delivered, people sorted out, all before your bladder gets distractingly full. That's what I want. What I know is what we all know, whether we'll admit it or not: every attempt to impose the roundness of a well-made play on reality produces a disaster. Life just isn't so, nor will it be made so.
The words of confirmation into the Church are an invitation: 'Receive the Holy Ghost.' And that choice must be made not once, but every day, every hour, every minute.
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