Today's
quotation:
The purpose of daily
prayer is the cultivation of a sense of the sacred. Sacred energy renews us.
Lives with no more sense of spiritual meaning
than that provided by shopping malls,
ordinary television, and stagnant
workplaces are barren
lives indeed. Spirituality enriches culture. Prayer
enables us to transform the world, because it transforms
us.
Marianne
Williamson
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Today's
Meditation:
One
of the most important truths about prayer is that it doesn't
necessarily have to have anything to do with any
religion. Our prayer is between us and God, or us and
life, or us and the universe--and many people see all of
these things as the same entity. Many people hesitate
to pray because they're not sure exactly to whom--or to
what--they're praying, and that's a shame because prayer can
be a very enriching experience, indeed.
But
our prayer can strengthen us significantly if we stick to
it. It can help us to reflect on our lives and to
clarify what it is that we really need or want. Prayer
can help us to think through what we want--is whatever we
can buy at the mall as important as the relationships we
have with our parents? Is getting that new job what we
really want, or would we prefer to get better at the job
we're doing now?
As
long as we don't see prayer as some kind of shopping list or
wish list, we can use prayer to great effect in our
lives. We can strengthen our contact with the
spiritual sides of ourselves and of the world--it's contact
that we always have, but often neglect, and it stagnates
with lack of use. We can make the connection dynamic
and useful just by sending a few words of thanks to God; we
can strengthen it by sharing those things that concern us or
worry us; we can broaden our connections by paying close
attention to the answers we may receive, most of which
already are with us, and are uncovered through the action of
prayer.
Prayer
is personal and prayer is powerful. We can add this
power to our lives very easily, and we can avoid the
frustration that many people feel with prayer by not
expecting particular answers to our prayers. If we
pray for someone in particular to love us and that doesn't
happen, frustration ensues. If we pray for that new
job and we don't get it, we can see prayer as
ineffective. But prayer isn't about getting
results. Rather, it's about strengthening ourselves
and understanding our connections to the world and with God.
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