What Is a Good Prayer?
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.
— C.S. Lewis
Inveterate Peaceniks Won’t Like This One
If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you and may posterity forget that you were once our countrymen.
— Samuel Adams
Fear Is Not a Bad Thing….
There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls. There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.
—Aeschylus
If you think on this one in relation to your own life, you will doubtless see the truth in it. How many toddlers, despite constant warnings of “Don’t touch; hot!”, insist on touching the stove? But after that bewildering, painful first burn, they never touch it again. How many teens fail to heed their parents warnings about taking relationships at top speed — until that first devastating heartbreak, after which they take relationships far more slowly and carefully? How many people rush into a marriage, only to find that they “married a stranger”? After that first divorce, they are far more careful in choosing their next marriage partner.
Pain, though definitely unpleasant, has a purpose. Even pain that seems senseless can be useful and valuable in shaping a life. We have to accept our pain and embrace its changing power, learning from it and using it to strengthen ourselves. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is the saying, and it is a true one.
Moments of Growth
In every department of life, [a sense of disappointment or anticlimax] marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing.
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Religious Principles Vital to National Security
Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
— George Washington
Are You Truly Educated?
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
— Aristotle
This is, I think, a very important point which we tend to forget in our debates both here on Blogit and elsewhere in society. Only the truly educated person can confront an alien thought and consider its merits without either blindly accepting it or condemning it. Taking the time to consider a thought does not change the intrinsic merit of the idea; however, consideration of an idea may often lead to acceptance, at least in part. Perhaps this is why we resist consideration of unfamiliar ideas: if we ponder an idea, we may find that we must change our own notions, perhaps throwing out half a dozen erroneous ideas which we have held dear because the new idea shows the old to be false. It is a daunting and frightening thing to evaluate and discard pet ideas. Only the truly educated may be capable of doing so.
What Will YOU Regret?
Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than by the things you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
— Mark Twain
What Is Courage?
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
— Amelia Earhart
A Mother’s Prayer
I read this poem a long, long time ago. I don’t know its source. I calligraphied it onto a piece of parchment, framed it, and keep it hanging where I can see it. But I’ve never been able to track down the author’s name.
Lord of all pots and pans and things,
Since I’ve no time to be
A saint by doing lovely things
Or watching late with thee,
Or storming heaven’s gates.
Make me a saint by getting meals
And washing up the plates.Although I must have Martha hands,
I have a Mary mind;
And when I black the boots and shoes
Thy sandals, Lord, I find.
I think of how they trod the earth
What time I scrub the floor;
Accept this meditation, Lord,
I haven’t time for more.Warm all the kitchen with thy love,
And light it with thy peace,
Forgive me all my worrying
And make all grumbling cease.
Thou who didst love to give men food
In room or by the sea
Accept this service that I do—
I do it unto thee.