10 Ancient Quotes on Prayer
From Tyler Staton's "Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools"
One of the strengths of Tyler Staton’s book, “Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools”, is that Staton has a keen sense of how to mine a quote from the past. He’s able to get to the heart of an ancient thought, and make it pithy and digestible in a way that makes you go, “Hmm.” It’s a great book.
Here’s a smattering of some of these bite-sized nuggets of wisdom from the past:
This Presence is so immense, yet so humble; awe-inspiring, yet so gentle; limitless, yet so intimate, tender and personal. I know that I am known. Everything in my life is transparent in this Presence. It knows everything about me—all my weaknesses, brokenness, sinfulness—and still loves me infinitely. This Presence is healing, strengthening, refreshing—just by its Presence . . . It is like coming home to a place I should never have left, to an awareness that was somehow always there, but which I did not recognize. - Thomas Keating
Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. - Rabbi Abaraham Joshua Heschel
We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us. - CS Lewis
If you are praying, you are already ‘doing it right. - Roberta Bondi
If we really mean to pray and want to pray we must be ready to do it now. - Mother Teresa
What do I need to do to be spiritually healthy? You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. - Dallas Willard
In contemporary society our Adversary [a biblical title for the devil] majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in ‘muchness’ and ‘manyness,’ he will rest satisfied. - Richard Foster
And so we end up as good people, but as people who are not very deep: not bad, just busy; not immoral, just distracted; not lacking in soul, just preoccupied; not disdaining depth, just never doing the things to get us there. - Ronald Rolheiser
If you can’t love, you can’t pray, either. Praying is loving. And learning to pray means learning to love. - Johannes Hartl
There is a prevailing bias among many American Christians against rote prayers, repeated prayers, “book” prayers—even when they are lifted directly from the “Jesus book.” This is a mistake. Spontaneities offer one kind of pleasure and taste of sanctity, repetitions another, equally pleasurable and holy. We don’t have to choose between them. We must not choose between them. They are the polarities of prayer. The repetitions of our Lord’s prayers (and David’s) give us firm groundings for the spontaneities, the flights, the explorations, the meditations, the sighs, and the groans that go into the “prayer without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17 KJV) toward which Paul urges us. - Eugene Peterson
If you have any great thoughts or quotes on prayer, I’d love to read them in the comments!
Dallas Willard's good comment there was the inspiration for a John Comer book that my daughter appreciated, then I appreciated too -- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
He has a way of putting for the traditional disciplines of Bible, prayer, memory verses with some good disciplines from the past, as part of a plan to slow down. Willard's comment was the source then of the book title. Yet it is not really a time management technique book.