“The ‘Realness’ of Prayer”
(Edited and adapted by Roger D. Duke)
Please enjoy The Gospel as it is manifested in Henri JM Nouwen’s reflections on prayer, taken from The Genesee Diary. This is a service of the https://www.invertedchristian.com/ A ministry of The Duke Consulting Group drrogerdduke.com
“The ‘Realness’ of Prayer”-Henri Nouwen On Prayer
“Prayer is the only real way to clean my heart and create new space. I am discovering how important that inner space is. When it is there it seems that I can received many concerns of others. . .. I can pray for many others and feel very intimate relationships with them. There seems to be room for the thousands of suffering people in prisons and in the desserts of North Africa. Sometimes I feel as if my heart expands from my parents traveling in Indonesia to my friends in Los Angeles and from Chilean prison to the parishes of Brooklyn. Now I know that it is not I who pray but the Spirit of God who prays in me. . .. He himself prays in me and touches the whole world with his love right here and now. At those moments, all questions about ‘the social relevance of prayer, etc.’ seem dull and very unintelligent.”’ [1]
[1] Henri JM Nouwen, The Genesee Diary, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 74-75; quoted in Richard J. Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 2010), 75.