Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools

The early Christians placed a higher value on gathering to pray than we commonly do today, and they possessed a higher concentration of the Spirit’s power than we commonly do today. When we pray, expressing our love to God, the power of God, more or less, just inadvertently gets thrown in.

“Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of himself. Ask and seek, and your heart will grow big enough to receive him and keep him as your own,” writes Mother Teresa.

If we pray for only big things, exclusively limiting our conversation with God to the objectively noble requests, we live a cramped spiritual life, with little room for the actual God we meet in Jesus.

Brennan Manning wrote, “Anyone God uses significantly is always deeply wounded . . . We are, each and every one of us, insignificant people whom God has called and graced to use in a significant way . . . On the last day, Jesus will look us over not for medals, diplomas, or honors, but for scars.”

To live apart from confession is an absolute tragedy, and to discover confession an unspeakable gift.

To discover love, you must feel the first-date butterflies for yourself, tell the other person how you feel with no guaranteed reciprocation, make vows in front of friends and family, and hold the wrinkled hand of your elderly spouse after decades of living out those vows through ordinary days and unexpected changes. True love requires personal exp

That love I can’t seem to outrun—it’s the only thing powerful enough to change me.

Prayer is not the ascent of the soul to some other place; it deals directly with our basic day-to-day needs and wants. Prayer is about the demands, obligations, and privileges of this very day.

It only takes a moment to turn an everyday place into holy ground.