Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Martin LutherRead
The secret of contentment is the realization that life is a gift, not a right. Next to faith this is the highest art - to be content with the calling in which God has placed you.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Contentment comes from understanding that life is a blessing and not something one is entitled to.
This quote emphasizes that achieving contentment in life hinges on recognizing life as a precious gift rather than an expectation or entitlement. By appreciating our circumstances and the calling we have in life, especially in the context of faith, we can cultivate a deeper sense of happiness and fulfillment.
Themes
ContentmentLifeGiftFaithCalling
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a motivational speech about finding joy in everyday life.
More from Martin Luther
All quotes →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.
Martin LutherRead
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.
Martin LutherRead
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.
Martin LutherRead
We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Martin LutherRead
In a mouse we admire God's creation and craft work. The same may be said about flies.
Martin LutherRead
Similar quotes
The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.
Madeleine L'EngleRead
You don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings... serendipitously.
John BarthRead
The control of the palate is a valuable aid for the control of the mind.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Walden is the only book I own, although there are some others unclaimed on my shelves. Every man, I think, reads one book in his life, and this is mine. It is not the best book I ever encountered, perhaps, but it is for me the handiest, and I keep it about me in much the same way one carries a handkerchief - for relief in moments of defluxion or despair.
E. B. WhiteRead
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
Virginia WoolfRead
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
Ernest HemingwayRead