News

I feel Philip Yancey's pain, or perhaps more accurately, he feels mine, and he feels the pain of most Christians--praying isn't always easy.

Yancey admitted during his presentation on Friday evening he struggles to pray for more than seven minutes a day. Hearing this as a follow-up to Festival of Faith speaker Herb Larson's spend-an-hour-with-God-or-you're-not-doing-it-right angle makes for an interesting comparison, but one best left to the confines of my own mind.

We've all prayed unanswered prayers, struggled with the role of prayer and predestination and wondered what difference prayer makes. In a world of disparate beliefs and theologies, these experiences unite Christians.

Yancey found the process of writing his new book tedious: hours of research, including interviews, weeks of solitude at his desk and the nit-picking process of editing. However, Prayer: does it make any difference? contains a message offering comfort to the questioning Christian.

Yancey neatly summarised the problem with our perception of prayer--self-interest. Whether it is the "thanks, thanks, thanks" or the "please, please, please" prayer, it is our own image at the centre. He proposed that prayer is an opportunity for us to "jump into the stream" of God's will, putting us in a position to be open to the needs of the world in the Creator's eyes. It makes sense. God knows what we want and need, He knows our burdens, but we don't know His. Prayer offers us this insight.

I found Yancey's presentation as refreshing as it was challenging. I might still kneel with eyes closed to pray, I might still slip into self-centredness, but prayer finally makes sense.