The Rope

May 25, 2015

I have often been guilty of praying most fervently when in peril:  when someone I love (including myself) is suffering or troubled, I employ the scripture “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). I ask God’s forgiveness for any deficit on my part, but today my prayers are fervent indeed. Illness is gripping someone I love.  These words of wisdom, straight from the good Book and from those who know it well, are a guide and a comfort.  If this blog serves any purpose at all, it is to communicate what matters (from laughter to grief to worry to love to even the noteworthy minutia of life).  Today, prayer matters most.  

"Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!" Psalm 4:1

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Mark 11:24

"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me." —C.S. Lewis, in "Shadowlands"

“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” - Martin Luther

“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.”- Abraham Lincoln

"If you cannot trust God for the temporal, how dare you trust him for the eternal?" - Charles Spurgeon

“Prayer is the rope that pulls God and man together. But, it doesn’t pull God down to us: It pulls us up to Him.” - Billy Graham

Hanging on to the rope...