Category
Category: prayers and prayer life
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Be careful what you pray for, Christian scholar
In our prayers as Christian scholars we will often find ourselves asking for wisdom, knowledge, depth of insight, and understanding. But do we realise that with the granting of these gifts comes an increased responsibility? Now let me say right at the beginning of this post that this truth is not unique to gifts of the mind.
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The academic prayer life: how to be more colourful and adventurous than just “make me successful”
As with all of our prayers (or mine at least) there is a tendency, when we pray about our work, simply to spiritualise the values of the culture around us and pray for what everyone in our lab or department wants, be they Christian or not. This usually means praying for some combination of success,
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A Prayer of Samuel Logan Brengle
Keep me, O Lord, from waxing mentally and spiritually dull and stupid. Help me to keep the physical, mental and spiritual fibre of the athlete, of the man who denies himself daily and takes up his cross and follows Thee. Give me good success in my work, but hide pride from me. Save me from
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Turning George Herbert’s ‘The Elixir’ into an academic prayer
As well as writing my own academic prayers I love the economy and precision of phrase in good poetry and find that it makes great prayer material as well. One of my favourite poems-cum-prayers is The Elixir, by George Herbert. It captures beautifully the spirit of Colossians 3:17 and 23-4: And whatever you do, in word
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The prayer life of an academic
How should we pray about our academic work? One tool I have found helpful (though I have used it far less often than I ought) is to pray into each area of the contacts-context-content schema I described in a previous post. Here is one prayer I wrote, related to the ‘context’ of my work. It’s
