If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

Capitalism rules worldwide, and a society whose economic fabric depends on constant growth requires that its citizens have ever-expanding needs and wants... In the West, it will take one with soul force equal to Gandhi's to change the prevailing dogma of ever increasing GNP. We may be forced to change our profligate ways some day, when the soil is depleted, the aquifers drained, the icecaps melted, and all the oil wells pumped dry. But the crisis will wait another fifty years or so; we'll leave those problems to a generation yet unborn.

If Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him.

Prayer is a place where God and humans meet.

Grace is heartfelt, tinged with love, a spillover gift of the God who extended undeserved favor toward us.

We should do whatever we can to cut through the scum that has grown on our understanding and rediscover freshness.

Prayer unfolds in the stillness of the soul.