In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of His reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with.
Interpretation
True self-discovery requires looking beyond oneself and aligning with a greater reality.
This quote emphasizes that to truly understand our spiritual nature and find God within ourselves, we must move away from self-centeredness and the illusions we often create about our worth and abilities. Instead of using our own flawed perceptions as a basis for judgment, we should seek to align our actions with divine will and recognize the inherent reality that exists in the world and in our interactions with others.
In practice
In a sermon about humility, a speaker might use this quote to illustrate the importance of focusing on a higher purpose.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
We all have the same problem as human beings. And it's something that we are born with, and we just see it manifest in different ways. And in this situation, it's racial. It's brutality. It's people breaking the law. It's the smoke, but the underlying fire is something that we all have to deal with, and that's our sin.
The guts carry the feet, not the feet the guts.
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science.
Listen to Jesus and follow him. That's the message of the Transfiguration.
The world is well supplied with spiders whose male ancestors died after mating. The world is bereft of spiders whose would-be ancestors never mated in the first place.
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