The Act of Prayer

By Shauna Niequist

"Prayer helps me. When I pray, something freaked-out and dazed inside me finds a place to lay down and rest.

"When I pray, I don't feel so alone in the universe. I feel like there is a web, a finely spun net, holding it all together, keeping it spinning. I feel powerless, and prayer reminds me that I may be powerless, but there is power, and the one who holds the power is good.

"Prayer reminds me that the universe is not powerless against evil and loss. I imagine a huge choir, hundreds of voices, and they're singing something unquestionably, remarkably beautiful, and if you look at each person, you can see their intensity, their attention to detail and precision, their extreme focus on sounds and phrases. And you can see their love for music and their passion to sing. You could never pick out an individual voice, out of those several hundred, but that's not the point. They are not singing to be heard individually. They are singing for the act itself, for the love of music and tone and melody. That's one of the reasons I pray, for the act itself.

"Pray for a few minute, joining your voice with the voices of Christians all over the world who pray with great passion and expectancy."

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