Quotes about Gift

The paradox of prayer is that it asks for a serious effort while it can only be received as a gift. We cannot plan, organize or manipulate God; but without a careful discipline, we cannot receive him either.

Humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift.

Prayer then becomes an attitude that sees the world not as something to be possessed but as a gift that speaks constantly of the Giver. It leads us out of the suffering that comes from insisting on doing things our way. It opens our hearts to receive. And prayer refreshes our memory about how other people reveal to us the gift of life.

Our lives can indeed be seen as a process of becoming familiar with death, as a school in the art of dying. I do not mean this in a morbid way. On the contrary, when we see life constantly relativized by death, we can enjoy it for what it is: a free gift.

When we live with hope we do not get tangled up with concerns for how our wishes will be fulfilled. So, too, our prayers are not directed toward the gift, but toward the one who gives it. Our prayers might still contain just as many desires, but ultimately it is not a question of having a wish come true but of expressing an unlimited faith in the giver of all good things. You wish that…but you hope in….

The spiritual life is a gift. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, who lifts us up into the kingdom of God's love. But to say that being lifted up into the kingdom of love is a divine gift does not mean that we wait passively until the gift is offered to us.

When we receive God's gift of life by relying on Christ, we find that God comes to act with us as we rely on him in our actions.

Your life is a gift. Before anything else can be said about you, for some reason the universe (or God, or being, or force, or reality, or whatever you name it) chose to give you life.

For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they've never been self-executing. That while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by his people here on earth.

Music has a way of filling in the missing places. It is a gift from God above, who didn't have to provide it, but He did anyway and I half think He decided life just wouldn't be as good without it.

Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.