Life Together Quote #35

From Chapter Three, The Day Alone.

It is one of the particular difficulties of meditation that our thoughts are likely to wander and go their own way, toward other persons or to some events in our life. Much as this may distress and shame us again and again, we must not lose heart and become anxious, or even conclude that meditation is really not something for us. When this happens it is often a help not to snatch back our thoughts convulsively, but quite calmly to incorporate into our prayer the people and the events to which our thoughts keep straying and thus in all patience return to the starting point of the meditation.

Life Together Quote #26

From Chapter Two: The Day with Others.

We have yet to say a few words with regard to evening prayer. This is the appropriate place for common intercessions. After the day's work we pray God for the blessing, peace, and safety of all Christendom; for our congregation; for the pastor in his ministry; for the poor, the wretched, and lonely; for the sick and dying; for our neighbors, for our own folks at home, and for our fellowship. When can we have any deeper sense of God's power and working than in the hour when our hands lay down their work and we commit ourselves to the hands of God? When are we more ready for the prayer of blessing, peace, and preservation than the time when our own activity ceases? When we grow weary, God does His work. "Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep" (Ps. 121:4).

Life Together Quote #25

From Chapter Two, The Day With Others.

The work of the world can be done only where a person forgets himself, where he loses himself in a cause, in reality, the task, the "it." In work the Christian learns to allow himself to be limited by the task, and thus for him the work becomes a remedy against the indolence and sloth of the flesh. The passions of the flesh die in the world of things. but this can happen only where the Christian breaks through the "it" to the "Thou," which is God, who bids him work and makes that work a means of liberation from himself.

The work does not cease to be work; on the contrary, the hardness and rigor of labor is really sought only by the one who knows what it does for him. The continuing struggle with the "it" remains. But at the same time the break-through is made; the unity of prayer, the unity of the day is discovered; for to find, back of the "it" of the day's work, the "Thou," which is God, is what Paul calls "praying without ceasing" (I Thess. 5:17).

Life Together Quote #22

From Chapter Two: The Day with Others.

Often in the Christian community there will be a desire for special prayer fellowships beyond the daily prayers of common devotions. Here there probably can be no set rule, except one, that such meetings should be held only where there is a common desire for them and where it is certain that there will be common participation in definite hours of prayer. Any individual undertakings of this kind may well plant the seed of destruction in the community. It is precisely in this area that there must be a demonstration of the strong bearing the burdens of the weak, and of the weak not judging the strong. The New Testament teaches us that a free prayer fellowship is the most natural things in Christian practice and may be viewed without suspicion. But where there is mistrust and uneasiness, one must bear the other in patience. Let nothing be done by force; let everything be done in freedom and love.

Life Together Quote #21

From Chapter Two: The Day With Others.

No matter what objections there may be, the fact remains that where Christians want to live together under the Word of God they may and they should pray together to God in their own words. They have common petitions, common thanks, common intercessions to bring to God, and they should do so joyfully and confidently. Here all fear of one another, all timidity about praying freely in one's own words in the presence of others may be put aside where in all simplicity and soberness the common, brotherly prayer is lifted to God by one of the brethren. But likewise all comment and criticism must cease whenever words of prayer howsoever halting are offered in the name of Jesus Christ. It is in fact the most normal thing in the common Christian life to pray together. Good and profitable as our restraints may be in order to keep our prayer pure and Biblical, they must be nevertheless not stifle necessarily free prayer itself, for Jesus Christ has attached a great promise to it.