Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Martin LutherRead
A dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God
Interpretation
Every task, regardless of its nature, can be done with a sense of purpose and devotion to a higher calling.
Martin Luther's quote suggests that even the most humble or simple jobs, such as milking cows, can serve a greater purpose when performed with the right intention. It emphasizes that all work can be a form of worship or an expression of one's dedication to God, highlighting the importance of the attitude and spirit with which we approach our daily tasks.
In practice
In a sermon about the importance of work, someone might quote Luther to encourage the congregation to find meaning in their daily jobs.
Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Now if I believe in God's Son and remember that He became man, all creatures will appear a hundred times more beautiful to me than before. Then I will properly appreciate the sun, the moon, the stars, trees, apples, as I reflect that he is Lord over all things. ...God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.
It is the part of a Christian to take care of his own body for the very purpose that, by its soundness and wellbeing, he may be enabled to labour, and to acquire and preserve property, for the aid of those who are in want, that thus the stronger member may serve the weaker member, and we may be children of God, and busy for one another, bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfiling the law of Christ.
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
In a mouse we admire God's creation and craft work. The same may be said about flies.
Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator
Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion - and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.
If the world is meaningless, then so are we; if we mean something, we do not mean alone.
Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.
Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
In the assemblies of the enlightened ones there have been many cases of mastering the Way bringing forth the heart of plants and trees; this is what awakening the mind for enlightenment is like. The fifth patriarch of Zen was once a pine-planting wayfarer; Rinzai worked on planting cedars and pines on Mount Obaku. . . . Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.
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