Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the transformative power of prayer and gratitude in creating an inner sense of peace and connection with the divine.
Richard Rohr's quote illustrates how engaging in prayer can lead one to a state of silence and stillness, allowing for deeper reflection and connection with the divine. It suggests that through consistent practice of gratitude and praise, individuals can transform their own lives to become embodiments of those virtues, thus deepening their relationship with God and enhancing their spiritual wellbeing.
In practice
In a church service to emphasize the importance of prayer.
My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.
The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.
I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.
Much of the Christian religion has largely become “holding on” instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.
HEAVEN knows the difference between SUNDAY morning and WEDNESDAY afternoon. God longs to speak as CLEARLY in the workplace as He does in the sanctuary. He longs to be WORSHIPED when we sit at the dinner table and not just when we come to His communion table. You may go days without THINKING of Him, but there's never a moment when He's not thinking of YOU.
God's grace comes in all shapes, sizes, and circumstances as God continues to unfold something magnificent in me.
Often the work of the Lord itself may be a temptation to keep us from that communion with Him which is so essential to the benefit of our own souls.
We are never alone when we stand with our Father in Heaven.
The words were unexpected, but so incisively true. So much of prayer is like that - an encounter with a truth that has sunk to the bottom of the heart, that wants to be found, wants to be spoken, wants to be elevated into the realm of sacredness.
Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul.
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