Prayer for the Restless

My Lord, you know the pain and the torment of every heart, have mercy on those who seek you without knowing it and long for you without realizing.

Stretch out your hand and invite them to your dinner. Show them how close you are to them and how easily they can find you if they open their hearts.

Fill them with your peace and love. Comfort their troubled souls and heal their hidden wounds.

Show them how to love you, so that they can find the strength to love themselves and their neighbours.

Don't let any of them be lost, but go looking for them like the good shepherd and bring them home.

Carry them in your arms, comfort them and make them feel your blessings every day.

Bring them from darkness to light, from the cold endless searches to the warm certainty of hope-giving faith.

AMEN

Life-Changing Books:

"The Shack" by William P. Young

How can a man forgive his father who has abused him as a child? How can a father forgive the serial killer who murdered his 6-year-old little daughter? What revelation can turn the bitterness of a broken heart into joy and peace with the world, God and the self? What amazing experience can heal such painful wounds and replace the horror by faith and love? It must have been something great, something deep, with a huge impact, something coming from far beyond the boundaries of this world. You can find the answer in William P. Young's novel "The Shack", a book that combines a skillfully woven plot with such depth and wisdom that it can't but make its way to the most intimate part of the reader's soul. 

Unconventional and fascinating, captivating and profound, straightforward but subtle and delicate, this novel has all the attributes of a life-changing book. It deals with an old controversial topic and attempts to provide answers to the most burning questions of humanity. But it does it in such an original and charming way that, whether you are a convinced Christian or not, you feel you are taken one step forward on your spiritual journey. 

"The Shack" attempts to reveal the secret face of the true living God and the Holy Trinity. God is not what people have made of Him in their attempt to control their own destiny and protect their vulnerabilities. His image is built gradually around His own words "I am Who I am". Suddenly God appears to us surprising, fresh and new. Ideas we've been used to, things we've been taught to believe for such a long time lose their grip, and other things we've never thought of come into the equation to bring new light to the matter. 

Is God a male or a female? Is God really the stern master portrayed in the Old Testament? Does God have the sense of humour? Does God intervene in human existence? What is the truth about heaven and hell? Why does God allow evil? Can the Holy Spirit alter the dimensions of time and space? These are just a few of the questions that are dealt with in this novel. 

"The Shack" is much more than a best seller or an enjoyable read. It is a living book, one of those inspirational writings you remember and treasure for a long time. There is nothing rigid in it, nothing ostentatious or preaching-like. It teaches without sounding like a sermon. Nothing near. It is a book that opens hearts and minds by challenging the very prejudices that stand in the way of our relationship with God and with one another. 

Links: 

The Shack Book Website

Author's Blog

How To Cope With The Challenges of Life

Every day brings new struggles and every struggle seems to make us smaller. People have to deal with illnesses, poverty and stress and all the consequences they bring. Frustration and regrets are silent killers that destroy bits of our soul, leaving us exposed and vulnerable. How can we find peace in adverse circumstances? How can we cope with the rodents of the spirit? It is a question that people have been asking since the beginning of all times and many haven't found the answer yet.

Think of your life as a room. A room can be dark and cluttered, musty and sad. A room can be a confining space where you feel a prisoner and where everything seems to work against you. In fact, a room can shape your own personality in the way a recipient can constrain water to its own shape. You are how you feel.

First of all, it is good to remember that you, like water, are free. You also have to remember that rooms have windows and doors. If you keep them closed, the air will get musty and hard to breathe and it will end up choking you. You might have the feeling that you are in a tight, closed environment but God had put many windows in your room. All you have to do is slow down, open your eyes wide and look for them. There might be a window right in front of you but you can't see it, because you are too oppressed by the atmosphere of the room itself.

Once you have found the window, you can draw the curtains, open it wide, and let the light and the fresh air in. You will see that the whole atmosphere changes. Our small room is surrounded by windows; that is a truth that should fill you with hope.

Now how can you find the windows? If you are so tensed and oppressed that you are most likely to miss them, you can start by praying. In the middle of all your troubles and worries, stop, take a break, close your eyes and let go. Then pray to the One who knows you and loves you deeply. Talk to Him like you talk to a dear friend and say,

"My God, the troubles in my life are choking me and stopping me from growing. I am confined to a small room with no view and no perspective. But you are great. The universe you have created is great and full of wonders. I know you have put many windows in my little room. Help me discover them. Take my hand and lead me to them. Let me feel the soft breeze on my face and smell the freshness of spring flowers. Let me discover the magic of the stars and the beauty of the rainbow. Help me let the light in and fill my black and white universe with color. Show me a world I've never seen, take me to new dimensions and unexplored frequencies. Give perspective to my life, so I don't waste it in pettiness and darkness. Let me discover the hidden magic of every day, the untold beauty of every moment. For you can do that. Amen."

Indeed, God can do that. This is where the fascinating faith journey begins.

Mother Teresa Quotes

Words that touch the heart and enlighten the mind. Words that speak of a life dedicated to loving and caring beyond any human boundaries. Words of wisdom and of a faith that defies reason.

Rather than reading these quotes as separate statements, read them as a whole, as the creed of a lifetime, the testament of a beautiful soul for the generations to come.

''Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.''

Mother Teresa

''God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.''

Mother Teresa

''We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love.''

Mother Teresa

''Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start. ''

Mother Teresa

''Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world.''

Mother Teresa

''If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one.''

Mother Teresa

''Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.''

Mother Teresa

''If you judge people, you have no time to love them.''

Mother Teresa

''Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.''

Mother Teresa

''Be the living expression of God's kindness.''

Mother Teresa

''Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.''

Mother Teresa

''Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.''

Mother Teresa

''Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.''

Mother Teresa

''We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.''

Mother Teresa

''The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.''

Mother Teresa

''The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.''

Mother Teresa

''One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.''

Mother Teresa

''Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.''

Mother Teresa

''Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.''

Mother Teresa

''Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.''

Mother Teresa

''I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.''

Mother Teresa

''I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.''

Mother Teresa

''I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.''

Mother Teresa

Prayer for Peace and Wisdom

 Dear God, our Friend, our Father. Fulfill the work you've started in our lives. Work in our church. Heal old wounds and remove old adversities. Bring us closer together and make us realize that you are one and that we're all one in your name. Help us overcome our earthly nature that longs for power and recognition. Make us never forget that our important work here on earth is to be messengers of your goodness and to reflect your love in everything we say and do.

So many times we act like children, letting our feelings and desires overcome our reason. So many times we let minor issues blind our faith and darken our perspective. Help our spirit grow and make our faith stronger, so that we can fulfill the work you've entrusted us. There are so many people around us who need our love and support; so many lives that have no direction; so many souls that are like sheep without a shepherd. Help us bring the breeze of hope and comfort into each and every one of them. Make us wake up and realize that our life is too short to waste it in pointless arguments and selfish battles; that our mission is too big and important to treat it lightly or ignore it for our vain ambitions.

You put us here to be a light in the darkness, to offer help and guidance to those who need them. Help us use all our resources for the good of our neighbours and the glory of your name. Bring peace in our hearts, so that we can share it to others. Teach us your wisdom, so that we can teach it to others. Change us with your love, so that we can change those around us. Be our friend and comforter, so that we, in our turn, can learn to be true friends and comforters. Strenghten our faith, so that we can help others grow in their faith. Touch us in every possible way, so that we can make a difference. For you are the sense of our lives and the meaning of our existence, help us live in accordance with your will. Amen

Quotes by Harry Emerson Fosdick

 
"For religion is something more than all the creeds that have endeavoured to express its thought. Religion is something more than all the organizations that have tried to incarnate its purposes. Religion is the human spirit, by the grace of God, seeking and finding an interpretation of experience that puts sense and worth, dignity, elevation, joy, and hope into life."

"To exist is one thing; to live is another. Existence is comprised of the bare facts of life alone--the universe in which we live, our heritage and birth, our desires and their satisfactions, growth, age and death. All the facts that science can display before us comprise existence. But life is something more. Life is existence clothed in spiritual meanings; existence seen with a worthy purpose at the heart of it and hope ahead, existence informed by the spirit's insights and understandings, transfigured and glorified by the spirit's faiths and hopes. It follows, therefore, that while existence is given us to start with, life is a spiritual achievement. A man must take the facts of his existence whether he wants to or not, but he makes his life by the activity of his soul."

"He [Jesus] has become to us in this, our inner need, what the luminous phrase of the Book of Job describes, "An interpreter, one among a thousand." And in spite of all our immediate expectancy, born out of our scientific control of life, mankind never needed that service more than now."

"Man's deepest need is spiritual power, and spiritual power comes out of the soul's deep fellowships with the living God."

"For the supreme moral asset in any man's life is not his aggressiveness nor his pugnacity, but his capacity to be inspired--to be inspired by great books, great music, by love and friendship; to be inspired by great faiths, great hopes, great ideals; to be inspired supremely by the Spirit of God. For so we are lifted until the things we tried to see and could not we now can see because of the altitude at which we stand, and the things we tried to do and could not we now can do because of the fellowship in which we live. "

"Spiritual transformation is infinitely various because it is so infinitely vital; but behind all the special forms of experience stands the colossal fact that men can be transformed by the Spirit of God."

"We do not passively submit to God's will; we actively assert it."

"God's righteousness is interpreted, not in terms of justice only, but of compassionate, sacrificial love; his Fatherhood embraces not only all mankind but each individual, lifting him out of obscurity in the mass into infinite worthfulness and hope. And more than this development of idea, the New Testament gives us a new picture of God in the personality of Jesus, and we see the light of the knowledge of God's glory in his face."

"Religion is the most intimate, inward, incommunicable fellowship of the human soul. "

"You never know God at all until you know him for yourself. The only God you ever will know is the God you do know for yourself."

"Christianity in the beginning was an intensely personal experience."

"For Christianity is not a creed, nor an organization, nor a ritual. These are important but they are secondary. They are the leaves, not the roots; they are the wires, not the message. Christianity itself is a life."

"Take the personality of Jesus out of Christian history and what you have left is chaos."

"Creation has never said its last word on any subject or landed its last hammer blow on any task. "

"The centuries are sick with a god made in man's image, and all the time the real God has been saying, 'Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself.'"

"Let a man once begin with God as the universal spiritual Presence and then go on to see the divine quality of that Presence revealed in Christ, and there is no limit to the deepening and heightening of his estimation of God's character, except the limits of his own moral imagination."

"The achievement of a worthy idea of God involves, therefore, the ability to discover God in all life, outside the Church as well as within, and in people who do not believe in him nor recognize him as well as in those who do."

"We are tempted to look for God's activity chiefly, if not altogether, inside the organization that avows him. But that cannot be true. He comes in like the sun through every chink and crevice where he can find a way of entrance. He does not wait to be welcomed. He does not insist on being consciously recognized before he enters a man's life. Rather, through any door or window left unwittingly ajar where he may steal in, even though unobserved, to lift and liberate a life, there the God of the New Testament will come--'the light which lighteth every man coming into the world.'"

" There is a flame in the center of your heart which you cannot put out. If there were no God it would be easier to disbelieve in him than it is. You cannot get rid of him because the best in you is God in you. "

"In a world which out of lowly beginnings has climbed so far and seems intended to go on to heights unimagined, God is our hope and in his name we will set up our banners."

Prayer for Spiritual Healing

My Lord, there are so many unsaid prayers in my heart. But you can hear beyond words and understand beyond phrases. You can read our most intimate thoughts and see our deepest fears and desires. Let us not be overwhelmed by them. Let us not be tormented by the things we cannot put into words. Look beyond the surface and heal our hidden wounds. For you alone have unconstrained access to those places. You understand the cause and the effect and the source of all our problems and concerns. Clear the dark corners of our being and bring sunshine into each and every one of them.

AMEN