One foggy night I was walking the dogs down the lane and heard the geese very close overhead calling calling their marvellous strange cry as they flew by. I think that is what our own best prayer must sound like when we send it up to heaven.

Praying because youre afraid is not like praying because you have faith. Faith and fear never meet. If you are faithful and still feel scared its whether youre not praying right or not praying at all.

... love for our neighbours does not die the minute we enter heaven it intensifies.

Prayer The act of falling to your knees in pleading fashion seeking help from a greater power than all else to have failed you previously.

A prayerless age will have but scant models of divine power. The age may be a better age than the past but there is an infinite distance between the betterment of an age by the force of an advancing civilization and its betterment by the increase of holiness and Christlikeness by the energy of prayer.

When I listen to you Godwhen I do what you ask me toI am like a treeplanted by a rivera tree full of fruitwith leaves that are always green. Ps 1paraphrased

But the Esquire passage I found most poignant and revealing was this one Mister Rogers visit to a teenage boy severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and terrible anger. One of the boys few consolations in life Junod wrote was watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood. At first the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous in fact that when Mister Rogers did visit he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didnt leave though. He wanted something from the boy and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently and when the boy came back Mister Rogers talked to him and then he made his request. He said I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me On his computer the boy answered yes of course he would do anything for Mister Rogers so then Mister Rogers said I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me And now the boy didnt know how to respond. He was thunderstruck... because nobody had ever asked him for something like that ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers and although at first he didnt know how to do it he said he would he said hed try and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesnt talk about wanting to die anymore because he figures if Mister Rogers likes him that must mean that God likes him too.As for Mister Rogers himself... he doesnt look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact when Mister Rogers first told me the story I complimented him on being smart - for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself - and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. Oh heavens no Tom I didnt ask him for his prayers for him I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.

Public prayers of are of little value unless they are founded on or followed up by private praying.

True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray then is to desire -- but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire is mistaken in thinking that he prays.

Jesus designed the Lords prayer to reveal His desire to give us more fully graciously and suitably the very things we most want but seek elsewhere. He does not want to deny us our desires but helps remove the false objects of our affections so that we will have the greater blessings he longs to lavish on us.