“Prayer reinforces humility. It is all too easy in the crush of human events to forget how little control we have. Indeed, it is to some degree a psychological necessity to think of ourselves as more effective, more powerful, and more in control than we really are. Just as necessary, though, Luther realized, is the recognition, daily or more often, that we are not the masters of our fate.”
– from Commentary on Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, Part Three: The Lord’s Prayer – http://everything2.com/title/The+Lord%2527s+Prayer
Kabir – The couplet
??????? ???? ????, ????-???? ?? ?? ??? ?
????? ?? ???? ????, ??? ? ???? ??? ?
transliterated:
Balihaari guru aapno, ghadi ghadi sau sau baar |
Maanush se devat kiya, karat na laagi baar ||
Translation:
Thank you, (Lord) Teacher, in every moment, many times in each moment  |
Turned the base in man to The Divine, with great ease, and minimal effort ||
Thinking today:
In our arrogance, we take ourselves to be masters of our own destiny and lord of all we see and survey. The Lord, the True Master, lays no such claim, but constantly endeavors to raise us to be just that, and make our ‘wishful thinking’ reality, while at the same time opening our inner eyes to the very tininess of our thinking.
For all that we see will be dust at some time in the future, but the real wealth we carry, our inner self, our thought, our reason, our knowledge, will live on and grow for ever, if only we agree to share.
All the material riches of the world fade to nothing in the face of our true inner potential, and this is a clarion call to balance the pursuit of the material wealth of the world with an equal time spent with the inner self. There is no need to give up one to realize the other, for the material riches of this world are the bounty the soul created for the body – the only requirement is for balance so that we leave a real legacy for the generations that will follow us.