Forgive and Pray

And therein lies another law of forgiveness:

If you believe that someone you know
is behaving in a way that may be harmful to himself or others,
you have an obligation to pray for him.

This law is not about passing judgment or infringing upon someone else’s free will. You are simply praying that this person will gently find his connection to God and fulfill his own promise. The rest is out of your hands. How he does that is really none of your business. But this type of prayer, toward someone else’s highest good and happiness, is extremely effective. It has the power to save another human being from experiencing something truly terrible, and the whole world benefits each time someone awakens to his higher purpose.

This is part of your service commitment. It is part of everyone’s promise to bring about a more peaceful and harmonious earth through forgiveness and loving thought, even toward those who hurt us. Especially toward those who hurt us.

— Kathleen McGowan, The Source of Miracles, p. 159

Reading the Bible in Community

Reading the Bible with others does not mean only that we read together in a small group, or that we read commentaries to benefit from the wisdom of great teachers, or that we listen to the Bible read and reflected on in worship or other gatherings.  It also means reading the Bible through the lens of others’ experiences, in the knowledge of others’ stories, in the midst of immersion in others’ lives.  For all this is in the service of loving God and loving one another.  It is not to make us more knowledgeable about the Bible’s text, although that is helpful.  It is not to make us more culturally sophisticated, although that is a benefit.  It is to plunge us deeper into life with God, and therefore deeper into life with one another, that we might take one more step toward the beloved, all-inclusive community centered in Christ.

— Richard J. Foster, Life with God, p. 105-106