{"author":"Lauren F. Winner","author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner","total_quotes":28,"quotes":[{"text":"Jews are obligated to fulfill the particularities of Mosaic law. They don't light Sabbath candles simply because candles make them feel close to God, but because God commanded the lighting of candles: Closeness might be a nice by-product, but it is not the point. Christians will understand candle-lighting a little differently. Spiritual practices don't justify us. They don't save us. Rather, they refine our Christianity; they make the inheritance Christ gives us on the Cross more fully our own... Practicing the spiritual disciplines does not make us Christians. Instead, the practicing teaches us what it means to live as Christians.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["christianity","faith","grace","spiritual-disciplines"],"id":30721,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"},{"text":"The only other person I have fallen in love with that way is Jesus, and I hope that goes more smoothly. I hope I remember, when I'm bored with Him, and antsy, and sick of brushing my teeth next to the same god every morning, I hope I remember not to leave Him. I am not so worried that He will leave me. The Bible, after all, is full of stories about God sticking with His Bride, no matter how stiff-necked and prideful and unfaithful she may be.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["truth"],"id":32341,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"},{"text":"It means the God who worries about our sins is not only God the judge, but also God the caretaker. He worries about sin because He craves righteousness, but also, simply, because He loves us.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["god","love","righteousness","sin"],"id":43465,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"},{"text":"I knew, as soon as I woke up, that the dream had come from God and it was about the reality of Jesus. The truth of Him. The He was a person whose pronouns you had to capitalize. That He was God.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["god","jesus","pronouns"],"id":56605,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"},{"text":"The change, I think, that conversion gradually effects on your heart is this: you come, over some stretched-out time, to want to do the things that God wants you to do, because you want to be close to Him.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["confession","faith","transformation"],"id":60508,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"},{"text":"And I understood that I ought not ask for a prayer language until I could ask without making it the test of my entire faith.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["belief","faith","petition","prayer"],"id":67956,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"},{"text":"In the words of Jewish liturgical scholar Lawrence Hoffman, 'Jews do offer freely composed prayers... But overall, it is the fixed order and content of Jewish prayer that gives it its distinctiveness and that demands the personal commitment to prayer as a discipline.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["jewish-tradition","prayer","spiritual-disciplines"],"id":80168,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"},{"text":"Phyllis and I pray these chaplets together; at three o'clock, every first Saturday. We are never in the same town. For months, we do not speak on the phone or email. We pray these chaplets for just a few minutes, maybe as many as sixty minutes, once a month on a Saturday afternoon. Intimacy with the elusive God is that kind of intimacy. It is the closeness of praying together, apart.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["friendship","intimacy","prayer","ritual","spiritual-practice"],"id":98331,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"},{"text":"Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt, or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith. And yet I continue to live in a world the way a religious person lives in the world; I keep living in a world that I know to be enchanted, and not left alone. I doubt; I am uncertain; I am restless, prone to wander. And yet glimmers of holy keep interrupting my gaze.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["doubt","faith","religious"],"id":103802,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"},{"text":"It is a great gift when God gives me a stirring, a feeling, a something-at-all in prayer. But work is being done whether I feel it or not.","author":"Lauren F. Winner","tags":["prayer"],"id":109456,"author_id":"Lauren+F.+Winner"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":28,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}