This Sunday’s readings: Luke 11:5-13

Reflections

… pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
~ Benjamin Franklin

We must lay before him what is in us; not what ought to be in us.
~ C.S. Lewis

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I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me. We say that we believe God to be omniscient; yet a great deal of prayer seems to consist of giving him information.
~ C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

We should not decide how to pray based on the experiences and feelings we want. Instead, we should do everything possible to behold our God as he is, and prayer will follow. The more clearly we grasp who God is, the more our prayer is shaped and determined accordingly.” “If we can’t say ‘thy will be done’ from the bottom of our hearts, we will never know any peace. We will feel compelled to try to control people and control our environment and make things the way we believe they ought to be.
~ Timothy Keller, 1950-2023, Pastor, Thinker

The best bit of advice I ever received about how to pray was this: keep it simple, keep it real, keep it up. You’ve got to keep it simple so that the most natural thing in the world doesn’t become complicated, weird and intense. You’ve got to keep it real because when life hurts like hell you’re going to be tempted to pretend you’re fine. And then at other times, when you make a mess of things, you’re going to be tempted to hide from God (which never really works) and end up hiding from yourself (which works quite well). And you’ve got to keep it up because life is tough, the battle is fierce, and God is not an algorithm. The journey of faith demands a certain bloody-mindedness of us all, not least in the realm of prayer.
~ Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.
~ Martin Luther