"I met a woman afflicted with multiple sclerosis, shockingly young, who limped up to tell me she was learning all she could about prayer because the disease was progressing so fast that soon she would be able to do little else.
I heard of suicides, birth defects, children hit by trucks, and teenagers raped. One woman, now an ordained minister, spoke of a dark period after her son died when for 18 months she could not bring herself to pray. She cried out one day, "God, I don't want to die like this, with all communication cut off!" Even so, it took her 6 more months before she could pray again.
In one meeting, a 20-year-old came to the microphone and chided me for not taking literally the Bible's promise about faith that can move mountains. I agreed I needed a larger dose of such childlike faith, yet at the same time, I could not dishonor the pain of suffering people by telling them their faith is somehow defective.
From such souls, I learn that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. Prayer offers no ironclad guarantees, just the certain promise that we need not live that mystery alone."
Everytime, I leave Philip Yancey, I return to find another lovely turn of phrase. I like that last paragraph.
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3 comments:
is this from his book, "Prayer?" I just started on it.
Yes it's a nice paragraph. thanks for the extract :) which book is it from?
not from any book - just his column in christianity today :)
Not What It Seems
A bird's-eye view of contemporary evangelicalism.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/march/22.120.html
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