Prayer
IT WOULD BE hard to name a contemporary religion writer who hasn’t offered meaningful insights into prayer. John Ortberg wrote that, in prayer, “with simplicity of heart we allow ourselves to be gathered up into the arms of the Father and let him sing his love song over us” (“The Life You’ve Always Wanted”).
Joan Chittister said, “Regular prayer reminds us that life is punctuated by God, awash in God, encircled by God.” For her, it’s the way she is brought to encounter herself so that “the work of coming to God [can] really begin” (“Called to Question”).
Kathleen Norris learned that “prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine.” Prayer stumbles over modern selfconsciousness and self-reliance, she observed.
For effective prayer, “the best ‘how-to’ I know is from Psalm 46: ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ (v. 10). This can happen in an instant; it can also constitute a life’s work” (“Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith”).
And in his most recent book, “Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?,”Philip Yancey describes prayer as a privilege, not a duty. He says that on a website poll conducted
by his publisher, just over 3 percent of respondents felt satisfied
with the time they were spending in prayer. “If prayer stands at the place where God and human beings meet,” Yancey writes, “then I must learn about prayer.”
