Private prayer is like straw scattered here and there: If you set it on fire it makes a lot of little flames. But gather these straws into a bundle and light them, and you get a mighty fire, rising like a column into the sky; public prayer is like that.
Interpretation
Public prayer has greater power than individual prayer, just as bundled straw creates a larger fire.
This quote signifies the importance and strength of communal prayer over solitary practices. Just as individual straws provide little warmth or light when scattered alone, private prayers can seem weak. However, when gathered together in a collective effort, they can create a powerful force, symbolized by the mighty fire, representing the amplified energy and intent generated through public prayer and unity.
In practice
During a church service when encouraging the congregation to pray together.
We put pride into everything like salt. We like to see that our good works are known. If our virtues are seen, we are pleased; if our faults are perceived, we are sad. I remark that in a great many people; if one says anything to them, it disturbs them, it annoys them. The saints were not like that - they were vexed if their virtues were known, and pleased that their imperfections should be seen.
Oh, how I like those little mortifications that are seen by nobody, such as rising a quarter of an hour sooner, rising for a little while in the night to pray!
I figure that if God actually does exist, he is big enough to understand an honest difference of opinion.
Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.
Fishing, Danny boy, is purely a state of mind. Some men, when they are fishing, are after fish. Me, I'm after things you could never set a barbed hook in.
You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain.
God is far more willing to save sinners than sinners are to be saved.
Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.
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