Friday, March 28, 2008

More Sister Wendy on Prayer

The truth is that I am deep in unpacking boxes which means my writing is coming in between. I long for more extended periods of writing! This book by Sister Wendy Beckett, however, is one I pick up and read a little at a time. It keeps me thinking while I unpack. Prayer and its importance and impact is a favorite meditative subject of mine.

Almost invariably when one talks about prayer, people think it is about asking God for something...it may seem to us that we are asking God to give us something--good weather, good health, good exam results--and, of course, that is our explicit intention. Since God is not a puppeteer who will stretch out and change the weather, adjust the cells of our body, or jiggle with the examiner's markings (and at a deeper level we know this), the essential nature of our plea is not that God will change the real world, but that he will strengthen us to bear the impact of it.

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