quote · Legacy record
First, when I feel that I am become cold and indisposed to prayer, by reason of other business and thoughts, I take my psalter and run into my chamber, or, if day and season serve, into the church to the multitude, and begin to repeat to myself—just as children used—the ten commandments, the creed, and, according as I have time, some sayings of Christ or of Paul, or some Psalms. Therefore it is well to let prayer be the first employment in the early morning, and the last in the evening. Avoid diligently those false and deceptive thoughts which say, Wait a little, I will pray an hour hence; I must first perform this or that. For with such thoughts a man quits prayer for business that lays hold of and entangles him, so that he comes not to pray the whole day long.
First, when I feel that I am become cold and indisposed to prayer, by reason of other business and thoughts, I take my psalter and run into my chamber, or, if day and season serve, into the church to the multitude, and begin to repeat to myself—just as children used—the ten commandments, the creed, and, according as I have time, some sayings of Christ or of Paul, or some Psalms. Therefore it is well to let prayer be the first employment in the early morning, and the last in the evening. Avoid diligently those false and deceptive thoughts which say, Wait a little, I will pray an hour hence; I must first perform this or that. For with such thoughts a man quits prayer for business that lays hold of and entangles him, so that he comes not to pray the whole day long.
Approximate author period: c. 1514 AD · renaissance
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Martin Luther
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1514 AD · renaissance
author lifetime midpoint (1483–1546)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- The Optimist’s Good Morning (1911) (1911 AD)
Complete signed selection 43; printed byline: Martin Luther; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911; printed copyright 1907
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