The Joy of Prayer
Just as thieves do not lightly attack a place where they see royal weapons prepared against them, so he who has grafted prayer into his heart is not easily robbed by the thieves of the mind.
St. Mark the Monk1 How much prayer is enough? If "total minutes prayed" is not the standard, by what do we measure the quality of our prayer lives? The question of quality struck me recently while jogging. I realized my nine-minute miles take over twice as long as the ones run by marathoners, and they run twenty-six miles compared to my three. I am not a marathoner and have no immediate intention of becoming one. So their standard means little to me except to remind me of increasing age. But between gasping breaths, I decided I should be measured against some standard. If not an Olympic standard, an age-graded standard? (Average thirty-eight-year-olds run a mile in so many minutes.) A magazine editor's standard? A Christian jogger's standard? Or should it be a personalized, subjective standard? How I feel afterward? Whether or not I maintain my ideal weight? My heart rate after running? There are many scales against which I could be measured, but which is the right one? The question occupied me for a few blocks and, because I was working on this book, I transferred the question to the Christian leader's prayer life. What should we measure our prayer lives against? The time other Christian leaders spend in prayer? An age-graded standard? How we feel after prayer? I had two problems to solve now, and the hard thinking slowed my jogging even further. Fortunately, the answer to my jogging dilemma came quickly. At what must have been the nadir of my running speed for that day, a mosquito landed on my cheek and bit me. Images heretofore held of ...
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