Why pray?

 

Been thinking some more about this and re-reading Chapter 5 of In Constant Prayer.  Here’s some more from the book:

Do no misunderstand me; I do not believe that saying these prayers is about our salvation.  Saying theses prayers is not about qualifying to be in that number when the saints go marching in or out or wherever it is that we are headed for eternity.

But going to church on Sunday, bringing our kids to church, paying our tithes, feeding the poor or taking care of the orphans in South America are not about salvation either.  Those things are about the way we live our lives, here and about whether we do the things that we are given to do to help be sure that Christ, through his body can actually be seen here on earth at all.

When I say that these prayers are not elective, I mean what if some of us are being drawn to say these prayers not to save ourselves but to save the whole world? Or to save the Church? what if we are being called to help restore this ancient prayer as a way to strengthen and sustain the Church in our time, as it strengthened and sustained the church in its earliest days? {page 69, 70}

 

And continuing in that line of thinking {page72, 73}:

I am increasingly convinced that if the Church is to live, and actually be alive, one of the reasons, maybe the most important and maybe even the only reason, will be because we have taken up our place in the line of the generations of the faithful who came before us.  It will be because we pray the prayer that Christ himself prayed when e walked among us and now longs to prayer through us.

 

Still diggin',