Prayer for Spiritual Clarity

(From Kierkegaard's Prayers)

Father in heaven, awaken conscience within us. Teach us to open our spiritual ears to your voice and to pay attention to what you say, so that your will may sound purely and clearly for us as it does in heaven, unadulterated by worldly cunning, undeadened by the voice of passions. Keep us vigilant in fear and trembling to work out our salvation. But also–when the law speaks loudest, when its demands terrify us, when it thunders from Sinai–let there be a soft voice which whispers to us that we are your children, so that we may cry out with joy: Abba, Father.

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Law vs. Grace

Law can control people, but it can't change their hearts. Grace can. Therefore grace is a much greater force than the law.

Justice pays evil for evil, "an eye for an eye". But to pay evil for evil means to increase evil (it's simple mathematics). To go "an eye for an eye" means to lose two eyes instead of one, therefore to increase the darkness.

To pay good for evil is to increase the good. To forgive is to open someone's eyes to the reality of grace, therefore to bring in more light.

To punish a guilty man is to identify him with his guilt. To forgive him is to reveal to him that he is more than his guilt. In the first case you set limitations. In the second case, you remove limitations.

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