If you find yourself loving any pleasure more than your prayers, any book better than the Bible, any house better than the house of the Lord, any table better than the Lord's table, any persons better than Christ, or any indulgence better than the hope of heaven – be alarmed.
Interpretation
Prioritize spiritual devotion over worldly pleasures.
This quote by Thomas Guthrie emphasizes the importance of maintaining spiritual focus and devotion in a world filled with distractions and temptations. It warns that if one starts valuing earthly pleasures and possessions above their prayers, religious texts, communal worship, or deeper connections with Christ, it is a cause for concern, suggesting a misalignment of priorities that could lead to spiritual decline.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a sermon to encourage parishioners to focus on their spiritual lives.
It is not with a rush and a spring that we are to reach Christ's character, and attain to perfect saintship; but step by step, foot by foot, hand over hand, we are slowly and often painfully to mount the ladder that rests on earth, and rises to heaven.
Your skin is prickly from fatigue and pain and there is a hissing in your ears. Time passes and the pills are taking hold like a glowing white planet coming into view. A reverse eclipse. And you watch with your eyes closed. The white planet is half exposed, it grips your heart in its light and seems to be pulling you forward and now you feel that you are falling. You are awake but dreaming. "The earth is not beautiful but the universe is," you say.
Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it's a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame's core.
There will be no war, but in the pursuit of principle no stone will be left standing.
It is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling - and indeed healthy - to ask why you have been given so much.
Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.
You," Said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want -- and what I want now is a drink.
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