My Commonplace Book

The season of Advent, a season of waiting, is designed to cultivate our awareness of God’s actions—past, present, and future.

In God’s Prayer Book: The Power and Pleasure of Praying the Psalms, Ben Patterson offers five suggestions for praying the Psalms.

John Stott said, “in every well-constructed worship service the pendulum should swing rhythmically between God addressing his people through Scripture and his people responding to him in confession, faith, adoration, or prayer.”

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen said, “Pain is an ocean with no sign of land. You look around in every direction and find nothing but more pain, as far as the eye can see.”

Rabbi David Wolpe said, “The stories of the Torah, read year after year, wear grooves in our souls…”

Esau McCaulley said, “Our national tendency to see only the best of America was standing in the way of truly becoming great. [Frederick Douglass] thought enough of this country to tell it the truth. We would be better off if more of us did the same.”

Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist, describes anxiety as a “conscious feeling” originating in the brain.

Nicolas Wolterstorff said, “Grief is existential testimony to the worth of the one loved.”