Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis

"Mere" Christianity is more like a hall out of which doors opens into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms(whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable.
It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while other feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light; and of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house.
And above all, you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In a plain language, the question should never be: Do I like this kind of service? but "Are these doctrines true; Is holiness there? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this doordue to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door keeper?
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong, they need your prayers all the more, and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.

Prayer by Sittser

hmmm..prayer. we pray everyday. Many people pray when want/need something. Some of them pray to an object, some of them communicating to God. But not everything that we asked for will be answered in the way we wanted it to be. Just read a book by Jerry Sittser. He covered quite an area of praying...

*The point of prayer, after all, is the relationship itself, not the things we get from the relationship.

*Strange as it may sound, we need unanswered prayer. It is God's gift to us because it protects us from ourselves. If all our prayers were answered, we would only abuse the power. We would use prayer to change the world to our liking, and it would become hell on earth.

*Prayer is never rejected so long as we do not cease to pray. The chief failure of prayer is its cessation.

*If answers to prayer came too easily, we would lose interest, not only in prayer, but also in God.

*The reason why we don't pray more - and probably don't see more answers to prayer, is because we don't know how to pray but because we don't really need to pray. We are not desperate enough

*Our prideful prayers put God into a dilemma - if he fails to answer our prayers, God appears mean and distant; if he answers our prayer, we end up worse of than before.

*Like all means to power, prayer too is subject to abuse. Our prayers can become selfish and mean and petty. God therefore shows us mercy by not answering all our prayers, we would become corrupt beyond measure, praying as if prayer was like a credit card with no limits.

Melacca Architecture (II)

Melacca Architecture

Frederick Buechner - A Room Called Remember

Frederick Buechner, a presbyterian minister, hailed by New York Time as the finest religious writer in America, and a finalist for Pulitzer Prize(Godric). For me, he is just a master of language...You can read through his books as if you are reading a poem. The phrases are so beautifully written is his books. You just feel like he's talking to you as a friend, when you actually are reading a religious book.

* Love God. We have heard the word so often that we no longer hear them. They are too loud to hear, too big to take in. We know the words so much by heart that we scarcely know them any longer as words spoken to the heart out of a mystery beyond all knowing. We take the words so much for granted that we hardly stop to wonder where they are seeking to take us. It is God you shall love first before you love anything else, and you shall love him with all that you are and all that you have it in you to become - whatever that means, whatever that involves. The words don't explain. They just proclaim and command.

* God knows we have all had our wilderness and our temptations too - not the temptation to work evil probably, because by grace or luck we don't have what it takes for more than momentary longings in that direction, but the temptation to settle for the lesser good, which is evil enough and maybe a worst one - to settle for niceness and usefulness eloquence instead of for truth.

* Faith is a way of waiting - never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost. Faith waits even so, delivered at least from that final despair which gives up waiting altogether because it sees nothing left worth waiting for. Faith waits - for the opening of a door, the sound of footsteps in the times when you alll but give up hoope of ever hearing it. And when at moments you think you do hear it, the question is: Can it possibly be, impossibly be, the one voice of all voices?

* The world is full of dark shadows to be sure, both the world without and the world within, and the road we've all set off on is long and hard and often hard to find, but the word is trust. Trust the deepest intuitions of your own heart. Trust the source of your own truest gladness. Trust the road. Above all else, trust him. Trust him. Amen.