FPC Prayer Page

Prayers and Thoughts for Reflection
February 2007

You may not know me,
but I know everything about you…
Psalm 139:1

I know when you sit down and
when you rise up….
Psalm 139:2

I am familiar with all your ways.
Psalm 3

Even the very hairs on your head
are numbered.
Matthew 10:29-31

PRAYING HANDS

There are hands that help and comfort,
Hands that plan and teach,
Hands that rest and hands that strive
For a goal just out of reach,
Hands that grasp and hands that give,
Hands that work and play,
Friendly hands and loving hands
That soothes life's cares away.
But praying hands are dearest
In the sight of God above
For in their sweet and earnest clasp
Are reverence and love.
No hands can do an unkind act
Nor cause another care
Nor sin against Our Father's love
When they are clasped in prayer.
Author Unknown

For you were made in my image.
Genesis 1:27

The universe is centered on neither the earth nor the sun. It is centered on God.
Alfred Noyes

The nature of God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
St. Augustine

Religion should be our steering wheel, not our spare tire.
Charles L. Wheeler

With boldness and wonder and expectation, I greet you this morning, dear Lord. This is a brand new day, a whole new beginning. I rejoice in the beauty of its light and warmth. I ask you now to bless this day and to be present in each moment guiding me through all of it and lead me down the pathway of service to you. Amen

All men have the need of Gods.
Homer

In me you live and move and have your being.
Acts 17:28

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
George B. Shaw

Religion means faith that man’s ideals are achievable and will be achieved.
Jerome Frank

If you were to take the sum total of all the authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene, if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excess verbiage, if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount.
James T. Fisher

And I’ll take away all the pain you have suffered on this earth.
Revelation 21:3-4

There is in all the sons of men
A love that in the spirit dwells,
That panteth after things unseen,
And tidings of the future tells.

And God hath built his altar here
To keep this fire of faith alive,
And sent his priests in holy fear
To speak the truth – for truth to strive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us put by some hour of every day
for holy things – whether it be when dawn
peers through the window pane, or when noon
flames, like a burnished topaz, in the vault,
or when the thrush pours in the ear of eve
its plaintive melody; some little hour
wherein to hold rapt converse with the soul,
from sordidness and self a sanctuary,
swept by the winnowings of unseen things,
and touched by the White Light ineffable!
Clinton Scollard

Delight in me and I will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4

Thank you, Lord, for the blessings of this day and for remaining at the center of it. Help me to rejoice instead of complaining – help me to always find ways to celebrate, instead of looking at the impossible. Grant me the wisdom to use this opportunity wisely and to celebrate the goodness of life. May I always see your grace above and beyond any pain – always remembering the darkest clouds have brilliant silver linings and that the glass is not half-empty, but almost full! Thank you for the challenge of each and every day. Amen

It is hard enough to make one Christian, harder still to make a Christian church. To make a Christian nation is a task to stagger the imagination; to make a Christian world may well seem all but impossible. Yet this, no less, is the goal to which our religion sets us.
William Adams Brown

What does Christianity mean?
In the home –kindness.
In business – honesty.
In society – courtesy.
In work – thoroughness.
In play – fairness.
To the unfortunate – pity.
To sin – resistance.
To the strong – trust and good will.
To the weak – help.
To the penitent – forgiveness.
To all men – reverence and love.
To God – worship and service.
Charles F. Banning

Religion exists not to answer all questions, or to clear up all mysteries; if that were its purpose, it could never be accomplished, for life grow, not less, but more mysterious as the intellect enters more fully into its truth.

The stars were wonderful enough in all conscience, when we thought of them as lamps of light set in a solid sky to guide the sailors on their journey over the trackless sea; but they are a million times more wonderful, now that we know them to be blazing worlds, that move through the vast infinities of space in accordance with exact mathematical laws.

Our own bodies were wonderful enough, when we thought of them as created in a moment by the fiat of the Almighty fro the dust of the earth; but how much more wonderful they have become since the sciences of physiology and embryology have taught us to trace their growth through countless stages, from the humblest kind of beginning to their present complex end.

Knowledge does not take from, it adds to, the wonder of the world. It is an infallible rule that the more a man knows the less he knows. He knows that he knows nothing compared with what there is to know – that he is but a child playing on the shore of an infinite sea of truth and picking up tiny pearls of wisdom that, by the grace of God, are cast up at his feet.

Religion leaves a million questions unanswered and apparently unanswerable. Its purpose and object is not to make a man certain and cock-sure about everything, but to make him certain if he is to live a human life at all. Religion does not relieve us from the duty of thought; it makes possible for a man to begin thinking.
G. A. Studdert-Kennedy

To fall in love with God is the greatest of all romances;
To seek him, the greatest adventure;
To find him, the greatest human achievement.
Raphael Simon

Religion is the first beautiful companion that man encountered in his wilderness. It is the pathway between life and death that is worn deepest by the feet of perpetually seeking generations. It is never far away when man knows exaltation and rapture. It is always present when he transcends himself in unearthly consecrations. It opens the door of vision when his genius hungers and thirsts for the substance behind all symbols, and other hands that can open it there is none. It is by his side when he walks the high and lonely places where he makes the discovery of himself. In life it is with him, illuminating him at his noblest, scourging him at his basest – the latter presence even more wistfully loved than the former. Neither in death does it leave him; but when all other voices mourn of irreparable defeat, it alone lifts the cry of defiance and stands on the ruins of mortality announcing mysterious and splendid victory for the fallen.
William L. Sullivan

Every good gift that you receive comes from my hand.
James 1:17

Religion in the life of man is a momentary glance from time into eternity.
It is Augustine visioning his Civitas Dei when the City of Man is about to crumble.
It is Pythagortas discerning eternal truths in the framework of a right triangle.
It is Plato grasping Beauty, Truth, and Goodness as eternal verities through    human reason.
It is Edna St. Vincent Millay writing “Renascence” and crying out, “The soul can    split the sky in two, And let the fact of God shine through.”
It is Socrates saying, “Knowledge is virtue.”
It is Newton at twenty-four discovering the binomial theorem and the law of    gravitation.
It is Handel with a paralyzed limb, destitute of money, facing imprisonment,    gathering new courage and writing his greatest oratorio, The Messiah.
It is Paul hearing the voice of his Lord on the Damascus Road.
It is Jesus in terrible agony crying, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.”
It is an ordinary man dedicating every fiber of himself to the betterment of the    world.
It is Albrecht Durer painting his “Praying Hands.”
It is Washington praying alone at Valley Forge.
It is Isaiah changing his purple garments of a prince for the tattered cloth of a    prophet to save a nation from chaos.
It is Augustine forsaking a lustful heart and fleeing into the arms of God, and later    becoming the Bishop of Hippo.
It is a priest jotting down the last words of a dying marine at Guadalcanal and    composing a letter of comfort to a widowed mother in St. Louis.
It is Jesus saying to his disciples, “Take up your cross and follow me.”
It is a teacher refusing a gainful salary elsewhere that he may instruct youth in    the wisdom of the ages.
It is Mary weeping at the foot of the cross.
It is Clement of Alexandria interpreting the divine Logos as the inspiration for all    truth.
It is a father sacrificing a suit of clothes that his son may stay in college.
It is a widow in a tenement taking in washing to support three orphaned children    of a former neighbor across the hall.
It is Luther standing firm at Worms saying, “I cannot and will not recant anything,    since it is unsafe and dangerous to do anything against the conscience.”
It is Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds and the flowers.
It is a man centering his focus on God and not himself, and finding his life    changed from a state of worry to a state of wonder.
It is Edith Cavell before a firing squad in Brussels saying, “Patriotism is not    enough.
It is a man saying, “My soul is so absorbed in the bigger issues of life that I    cannot afford to be jealous and suspicious of any person.”
It is the bigger issues of life that I cannot afford to be jealous and suspicious of    any person.”
It is the sacrifice of a meal by an American family in order that starvation in China    may be averted.
It is Bernard at a monastery in Clairvaux in love with Christ and married to the    Church.
It is Servetus burning at the stake in Geneva for the sake of truth.
It is Amos forsaking his flock at Tekoa to preach against hypocrisy at Bethel.
It is Schleiermacher discerning religion as man’s feeling of absolute dependence    upon God.
It is Katherine Mansfield saying about her literary creations shortly before her    death, “Not one of these writings dare I show to God.”
It is Thomas Aquinas wedding reason and faith.
It is my feeling of humility when I contemplate God as the Life of a universe    extending a million light years into space.
It is Deutero-Isaiah discerning the nations as specks of sand when compared to    God’s majesty and infinity.
It is my little self on a second-rate planet eradicating fear, self-centeredness,    resentment, and guilt in order that it may become an instrument of God’s    energetic redemptive love.
It is the writer of the Gospel of John reporting, “let not your hearts be troubled;    believe in God.”
Yes, these are all religion. For religion is as big as life and as normal an experience    as breathing, eating, and sleeping.
Thomas S. Kepler

My thought toward you are countless as the sand on the seashore.
Psalm 139:17–18

All roads that lead to God are good;
What matters it, your faith or mine;
Both center at the goal divine
Of love’s eternal brotherhood.

A thousand creeds have come and gone;
But what is that to you or me?
Creeds are but branches of a tree,
The root of love lives on and on.

Though branch by branch proves withered wood,
The root is warm with precious wine; Then keep your faith, and leave me mine;
All roads that lead to God are good.
Ella Wheller Wilcox

O Lord, Guide me to hear your whispers and to live each day a new one for you. Help me to remember that if I get the little things right, the big things will take care of themselves. Open the door of my heart. Make me a stone in your temple of love. Amen

Religion’s place in the world is to help, to speak to men and women, certainly in the whole range of their lives, but especially at their deepest levels of need. In sickness and sorrow, in failure and despair, in the face of the baffling complexities, inconsistencies, seeming injustices, the sheer idiotism of much of our world – it is here especially, and not on happy, sunny Sunday mornings, that Christ seeks to come, and it is in such situations that men’s real need for him is born.
Nathan M. Pusey

Religion does not occupy any one part of man’s life. It is the reaction of a man’s whole being to his object of highest loyalty. ?religion must be felt and thought. It must be lived out; it must translate itself into action. Religion is not a segment of life, nor is it connected with any one time or place. It is not just ritual, ceremony, doctrines, or the church, even though these may all be aids in stimulating it. The great religious leaders of the race have spoken of religion as a vital, personal experience. This experience grows out of real needs – the need for courage and companionship in life. Micah speaks of man’s chief duty. “TO love mercy, to do justly, and to work humbly with thy God.” For Jesus the great commandments were love of God and love of one’s neighbor. Whether religion has been interpreted as man’s co-operative quest for the values of life or as “the Spirit of God in the soul of man,” it has been stressed as involving the whole of life.
Harold H. Titus

My plan for your future has always been filled with hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

There is no unbelief;
Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
And waits to see it push away the clod,
He trusts in God.

Whoever says when clouds are in the sky,
“Be patient, heart; light breaketh by and by.”
Trusts the Most High.

Whoever sees ‘neath winter’s field of snow,
The silent harvest of the future grow,
God’s power must know.

Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep,
Content to lock each sense in slumber deep,
Knows God will keep.

Whoever says “to-morrow,” “The unknown,”
“The future,” trusts that Power alone
He dares disown.

The heart that looks on when the eye-lids close,
And dares to live when life has only woes,
God’s comfort knows.

There is no unbelief;
For thus by day and night unconsciously
The heart lives by the faith the lips deny.
God knoweth why!
Elizabeth York Case

Jesus is God spelling himself out in language that man can understand.
S. D. Gordon

Your religion is good if it is vital and active; if it nourishes in you confidence, hope, love and a sentiment of the infinite value of existence; if it is allied with what is best in you against what is worst, and holds forever before you the necessity of becoming a new man; if it makes you understand that pain is a deliverer; if it increases your respect for the conscience of others; if it renders forgiveness more easy, fortune less arrogant, duty dear, the beyond less visionary. If it does these things, it is good, little matters its name; however rudimentary it may be when it fills this office, it comes from the true source, it binds you to man and to God.
Charles Wagner

In its essence the Gospel is a call to make the experiment of comradeship, the experiment of fellowship, the experiment of trusting the heart of things, throwing self-care to the winds, in the sure and certain faith that you will not be deserted, forsaken nor betrayed, and that your ultimate interests are perfectly secure in the hands of the Great Companion. This insight is the center, the kernel, the growing point of the Christian religion, which, when we have it, all else is secure, and when we have it not, all else is precarious.
L. P. Jacks

This is what I found out about religion; it gives you courage to make the decisions you must make in a crisis and the confidence to leave the results to a higher Power. Only by trust in God can a man carrying responsibility find repose. Dwight D. Eisenhower

God has a purpose for each one of us, a work for each one to do, a place for each one to fill, an influence for each one to exert, a likeness to his dear Son for each one to manifest, and then, a place for each one to fill in his holy temple. Arthur C. A. Hall

God be in my head,
      And in my understanding.

God be in my eyes,
    And in my looking.

God be in my mouth,
    And in my speaking.

God be in my heart,
    And in my thinking.

God be at my end,
    And at my departing.
Sarum Prime

Each day, I discover new gifts you offer me, and the list of reasons to be thankful grows. As I accept your gifts, guide me to become a person who shares with others so that they too can live abundantly. Help me to recognize that my giving can only spring from what has already been given. Stir me into vision and action and to recognize when to wait and to understand when to move. Help me to recognize your presence in this nudge to movement. May I never forget that a gathering of two is really a fellowship of three as you are always there with us. Amen

The kingdom of God is within you.
Luke 17:21

Those who trust in the Lord for help
will find their strength renewed.
They will rise on wings like eagles;
they will run and not get weary;
they will walk and not grow weak.
Isaiah 40:31

Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands.
Protect them as they protect us.
Bless them and their families for the selfless acts
they perform for us in our time of need.
I ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen.