Happy Birthday Belief

This year, my mom asked for a book for her birthday. PRAYER by Tim Keller. Thanks to the wonders of Amazon, I had it shipped to her snowy doorstep half a continent away without setting eyes on it. Her telephone thank yous and rave reviews prompted me to flip through it when I noticed a copy in a Barnes and Noble display. I keep coming back to what I found and jotted down in my journal:

"Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change--the reordering of our loves. Prayer is how God gives us so many of the unimaginable things he has for us. Indeed, prayer makes it safe for God to give us many of the things we most desire. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life. We must learn to pray. We have to."

I'm sending up some prayers this evening by candlelight.

Belief is one of the most beautiful things I know.

Amen and amen.