A Quote by Bernard of Clairvaux
The rivers of Grace cannot flow uphill, up the steep cliff of the proud man's heart.
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Grant me the grace to dissolve my negative thoughts about myself today. I breathe the grace of kindness into my heart. And may the grace of healing flow abundantly to every one in need of help.
It is true that water will flow indifferently to east and west, but will it flow equally well up and down? Human nature is disposed toward goodness, just as water tends to flow downwards. There is no water but flows downwards, and no man but shows his tendency to be good. Now, by striking water hard, you may splash it higher than your forehead, and by damming it, you may make it go uphill. But, is that the nature of water? It is external force that causes it to do so. Likewise, if a man is made to do what is not good, his nature is being similarly forced.
Philosophy is a proud, sullen detector of the poverty and misery of man. It may turn him from the world with a proud, sturdy contempt; but it cannot come forward and say, here are rest, grace, pardon, peace, strength, and consolation.
A circle cannot fill a triangle, so neither can the whole world, if it were to be compassed, the heart of man; a man may as easily fill a chest with grace as the heart with gold. The air fills not the body, neither doth money the covetous mind of man.
Inching one's way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can't take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that
I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Believing, repenting, and the like, are the product of the new nature; and can never be produced by the old corrupt nature... as the child cannot be active in his own generation, so a man cannot be active in his own regeneration. The heart is shut against Christ: man cannot open it, only God can do it by his grace.
I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
As rivers, the nearer they come to the ocean whither they tend, the more they increase their waters, and speed their streams; so will grace flow more fully and freely in its near approaches to the ocean of glory.
When the rhythms of our body-mind are in synch with nature's rhythms, when we are living in harmony with life, we are living in the state of grace. To live in grace is to experience that state of consciousness where things flow effortlessly and our desires are easily fulfilled. Grace is magical, synchronistic, coincidental, joyful. It's that good-luck factor. But to live in grace we have to allow nature's intelligence to flow through us without interfering.
There's a great blunder which we commit. Through communication, we try to control people...The fact is that nobody can control anybody. All you can do is flow. You can flow with each other, like rivers and streams flow with each other and they all end up in the same ocean. All things come from God and all things go to God. It's a very simple formula which you have learned.
If people are constantly falling off a cliff, you could place ambulances under the cliff or build a fence on the top of the cliff. We are placing all too many ambulances under the cliff.
The inner man cannot be forced to do out of his own free will, what he should do, except the grace of God change the heart and make it willing.
The presence of any humility in my life is purely and completely an evidence of God's grace. From my perspective, I am not a humble man. I am a proud man pursuing humility by the grace of God.
The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves.
The care of rivers is not a question of rivers but of the human heart.
