In his Take & Read, Eugene Peterson notes that Hans Urs von Balthasar’s book, Prayer, is “simply the best book on prayer I have ever read.” Here’s a morning reading today that helps underscore the point–
“Harassed by life, exhausted, we look about us for somewhere to be quiet…we yearn to restore our spirits in God. But we fail to look for Him where He is waiting for us, where He is to be found: in His Son who is His Word. We inundate Him with problems, demands for information, for clues for an easier path, forgetting that in His Word He has given us the solution to every problem and all the details we are capable of grasping in this life. We fail to listen where God speaks; where God’s Word rang out in the world once for all, sufficient for all ages, inexhaustible.
Or else we think that God’s Word has been heard on earth for so long that by now it is almost used up, that it is about time for some new word, as if we had the right to demand one. We fail to see that it is we ourselves who are used up…whereas the Word resounds with the same vitality and freshness as ever. It is just as near us as it always was.”