Gosh, I think my favorite line of this chapter is this one:
"We are praying to the God whose very sweetness has broken through to us" (p 185).
I'm not sure that's a sentence that resonates with every believer in God. If the God you pray to is often angry and needs to be appeased by your prayers, this idea of sweetness probably feels foreign to you.
But if the God you pray to is a refuge or a peacemaker, loving like a father and/or a mother, then you know exactly what Kate and Jessica are talking about here when it comes to prayer.
Prayer, which is ultimately a mystery.
Prayer, which sometimes God answers.
And sometimes doesn't.
And sometimes we can't see or don't understand the answers.
And sometimes answers in a way we didn't want or didn't expect.
"In prayer," they write on page 186, "we are brought into the presence of God, whose eternal reality translated for us. We sense we were created because we are loved. Just that. We are not a means, but an end. And we are more whole, more alive, with a wellness that we didn't create through some transactional effort on our part."
"The mystery of prayer is that we may never understand exactly how it works, just that it draws us into intimacy with a God who hears" (p 186).
Pastor Allison
I'm curious:
Waiting is a necessary part of prayer. "To pray means we have to yield up space and time, and some of our darling preoccupations. For one hot minute there is a self-emptying that mirrors God's own" (p 186).
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. Simone Weil (p 188)
Look at your life: is there maybe a void now that you could yield up to God in a time of prayer?
