"Not until we are able to join the Master and the mystics in the Garden and say, not only with our lips but with our lives, "Not my will but Thine be done," shall we even begin to know what Christianity really is, for the way of the mystics is the way of the divine life, every son of which might take for his motto that great word uttered by one of the old German saints, "I want to be to the Eternal Goodness what a man's right arm is to a man."" - Thomas LeRoy Haywood, Christian Mysticism and Other Essays
Constant seeking for God
“Seeking is as good as beholding during the time that He wishes for the soul to be in labour”
The school of Spirit
In the school of the Spirit, man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying.”
Johannes Tauler (c.1300-1361)
Paul’s wisdom, always pertinent
"...we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh." 2 Corinthians 4: 7-11
Direction
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him
And He shall direct your paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6
Aspiration by Emily Dickinson
We never know how high we are Til we are called to rise; And then if we are true to plan, Our statures touch the skies. The heroism we recite Would be a daily thing, Did not ourselves the cubits warp For fear to be a king.
Me, my, mine…
Father, I want to know You, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part from them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from You the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that You may enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shall You make the place of Your feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for You Yourself will be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
A prayer by A.W. Tozer, from The Pursuit of God
Budding & blooming
Happy birthday and thank you, A.W.
It is not what a man does that determines wether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living will be a priestly ministration. As he performs his never-so-simple task, he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory" (Isaiah. 6:3)
A.W. Tozer - The Pursuit of God (with thanks to N.K.)
In His love
To know the Cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the Cross is the sign of salvation, and no man is saved in his own sufferings. To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; more, it is to know the love of Christ who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. It is, then, to know Christ. For to know His love is not merely to know the story of His love, but to experience in our spirit that we are loved by Him, and that in His love the Father manifests His own love for us, through His spirit poured forth in our hearts.
Thomas Merton – No Man is an Island
Being a walking question mark 