"Remembering the facts of death and Heaven gives us an even more pressing reason to learn to pray: We do not have an infinite amount of time."
“We are one day nearer Home today than we ever were before. I guarantee you that after you die you will not say ‘I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.”
“We must learn to pray because infinite and uncompromising Love will not leave us alone until we do.” This reminds me of Augustine in The Confessions, right at the beginning, where he says, “You stir us up to delight in your praise; for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless till if finds its rest in you.” (I.I.I.)
“Prayer is like gardening: the growing of something alive – in this case, alive for eternity. It is gradual, it is invisible, but it is the difference between life and death. Prayer is plant food. This plant – your soul – is going to be transplanted at death into an immortal, eternal garden. Learning to pray is dress rehearsal for eternal life.”
I just got an email this morning about a very young child with an inoperable abdominal tumor. It's heart breaking... I think, "Lord you have to heal this little boy!" His life is full ahead of him. We think about life in terms of a long time usually, unless something like this comes along. We hear the word "cancer" and it scares the life out of us before it kills us. In part we think it's sad because in the back of our unconscious we don't have our own mortality in view. We think we have lots of time, and we don't really. We shouldn't go through life thinking we're out of time either it seems to me, but now that I'm 45 I realize how quickly time goes by. My summer went by yesterday! This is the quickest summer on record for me I think. We're going to be in God's presence, the eternal Kingdom, for much longer than we're going to be here. Reminds me of the end of The Silver Chair where Eustace and Jill ask Aslan if Caspian has died. Aslan response is something like... "Died? Yes... that's what you call it in your world... mos people have you know."
To learn to live life in God's presence in prayer surely gets us ready.
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