Seeing Differently

Some more from past (or is it!) from the publication "Context" (see Aug. 25 post):
June 1, 1971: William Stringfellow on prayer:
"One difficulty we have in understanding prayer is thinking that it is necessarily verbal when it is only, in fact, incidentally verbal and may not be verbal at all. The underlying state of being which is prayer I take to be one in which the initiative is with God and not with the one who prays. It is, even more specifically, the initiative of God affirming one's life and identity. The active participation that you or I would have as one who prays is responsive to that initiative and is, in the end, a kind of participation in God's affirmation of one's life. I take this to be the spirit, for example, of the Gethsemane prayer of Jesus and all such other exemplary prayers that focus upon the fulfillment of the will of God rather than the satisfaction of the whim or the will of the one who prays."

Sort of connects with this from the sermon this week which was on Hebrews 13:1-8:
Francis Taylor Gench reminds us that "love, in the New Testament, is not something you feel; it is something you do…. Love seeks the well-being of others and is embodied in concrete efforts in their behalf." (Hebrews, Westminster Bible Companion).
Here are the exhortations from Heb 13:1-8 (my paraphrase) keep us ‘real’ with ourselves and with each other:
i] Mutual love, compassion
ii] Hospitality, being welcoming
iii] Caring for suffering brothers and sisters
iv] Keeping our covenants with each other
v] Materialism, not being dependent on “things”
vi] knowing that God is always with us on our journey.
Possibly a good 'pattern' for living!
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Finally, from Dec. 15, 1973 "Context" just a thought that may or may not connect but I like it...
...a quote from Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Gyrgy: "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."