Prayer may seem at first like disengagement, a reflective time to consider God's point of view. But that vantage presses us back to accomplish God's will, the work of the kingdom. We are God's fellow workers, and as such we turn to prayer to equip us for the partnership.

O God, make the bad people good, and the good people nice

Individuals and societies are not helpless victims of heredity. We have the power to change - not by looking "down" to nature but "up" to God, who consistently calls us forward to become the people we were designed to be. A confused world urgently needs a model of what that looks like. If Christians fail to provide that model, who will?

The self-sacrificing, servant aspect of the Christian life has many parallels to parenthood.

I have found that living with faith in an unseen world requires constant effort.

...to see that God does answer, in great things as well as small, the prayers of those who put their trust in Him will strengthen the faith of multitudes.

Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.