Quotes of the Day for May 1, 2026 – Thoughts on prayer and the offering of our time
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
“In the Bible there is a direct command: “The first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God” (Exodus 23:19)…As the Apostle Paul writes: For if the firstfruit is holy, the lump is also holy (Romans 11:16)…We give the Lord a small portion in order to sanctify our right to use everything else… what about time? Time is our modern harvest. And here the law of the firstfruits works just as strictly. The first thought is the “firstborn” of our mind. If we offer it to God…we sanctify the entire stream of our thoughts for the coming day. To rise for prayer before opening the phone, a book, or sitting down to breakfast—that is our spiritual firstfruit. We give God the very first, still drowsy minutes. This is our offering.” (Alexei Tereshchenko)
“Prayer is the great tithe of time. When we think of tithing, we often think of finances. Tithing is offering back to God a portion of what He has given us. When we set time aside solely to pray, we say no to the world and tithe that time to God. We offer back to God a portion of the time He has given us.” (Fr. Joshua Makoul)
“When we pray to God, we are spending “quality time” with Him. In other words, we are using every moment of our interaction with Him constructively. We praise Him not because He needs it or demands it, but because we need it for our own sake, because He created us in His image (Genesis 1:26) to imitate Him in His attributes as interpersonal and communicative. So when we spend time with Him, we resemble the oneness of the Holy Trinity as a communion of Three Persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — who are perfectly united to one another in their essence and will and power. In prayer, God gives us Himself … and in prayer, we give God to one another.” (Fr. Stelyios Muksuris)
“No matter where I am, at home, abroad, I begin the day with morning prayer….If from the very morning we allow the mind to wander in idle thoughts, it will be much harder later to focus on God. Imagine a musical instrument; if you begin to play without tuning it, all the music will be out of tune. Morning prayer is the tuning of our inner pitch. Even fifteen or twenty minutes of a morning rule can sanctify all the remaining hours. The day becomes not mere routine, but service. And when, at midday, anger toward a colleague or irritation in a line overwhelms you, this “firstfruit” will work like an immunity. It is enough to remember: I gave this day to the Lord this morning—can I now defile it with my anger?” (Madeleine L'Engle, Alexei Tereshchenko)
“In prayer for one another, we give God to each other. We sacrifice a very minimal portion of our time and energy for someone else’s welfare. When we pray for one another, we spend time with them. When we pray for one another, we love them because we broaden our hearts to fit them inside, as God does for each one of us. When we pray for one another, we become each other’s “little Christ”, a paradise and an oasis for the other. We open up heaven for them because we allow God into their lives when they most need it…prayer [is] a “barrier against affliction”, possessing the ability to wipe out conflict because it softens our heart to the plight of others. If we were ever judgmental or hurtful toward another, prayer for them heals our enmity and produces in us the necessary humility to find salvation. It gives us the opportunity to witness our shared humanity — its fallenness but also its pristine beauty — and to bring about the internal change whose absence prevents us from attaining perfection.” (Fr. Stelyios Muksuris, St. John Climacus)
Comments