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| What Are You Asking? |
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Sometimes I feel like
God is mad and will not do what I ask him to do. I wish I
was like those who have strong faith.
I think we go to God because we have needs and because
we have an empty place that only God can fill. Paul said
God has planted in all of us a spirit that cries out to God as
"Abba! Father!"
Faith will come later. Faith isn't a precondition for turning to
God. Faith arises as we become aware that God is loving
us and hearing us. Faith, in other words, isn't an
accomplishment that gives us permission to pray , but the
consequence of having approached God.
from What
Are You Asking?
by Tom Ehrich
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Speaking of Spirituality |
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Frederica Mathewes-Green
on what drew her to Orthodox Christianity and how she
practices her faith today:
…what we meet in prayer is not amorphous
nothingness, but a Person who comes ever more clearly
into focus, a Person who is incarnate love. The prayer that
developed in the early church to help believers acquire the
habit of "praying constantly" is a short plea addressed to
Jesus, the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
have mercy on me."
That prayer reinforces the sense that there are two
persons involved, rather than a melting, featureless unity.
So the experience of Christian
prayer is very different from that of many Eastern
religions. We could even say it is the opposite: it
is love between two persons, between Christ and the
individual believer, and that contact fills and overflows the
believer with Christ's love for all.
Read
more from Frederica Mathewes-Green
 Rabbi Lawrence Kushner
combining original thought, common sense, and the
mystical bent of an old-fashioned rebbe
There is no person who does not have his sacred
moment, no place devoid of the holy, no moment beneath
being the footstool of Heaven." Indeed, if we have learned anything, eruptions of
the holy seem more likely at unlikely times and places.
Read
more from Lawrence Kushner
The Pentecost Season is simple time. Unadorned with
festive holy days, this period helps us focus on God in our
ordinary lives.
The true aim of our Christian life consists
in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God.
—St. Seraphim of Sarov
from Daily Quotes
for the Pentecost Season
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