The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

by Rich Villodas

This is why the image of the redwood root system I alluded to in the introduction is such a helpful analogy. I’ve seen many people work for racial justice and reconciliation without any commitment to prayer. When we live this way, we only see ourselves as righteous heroes exposing the powers of the world, while not seeing how complicit we are as parts of the world’s sinful structures. Prayer forges humility and opens us up to the love of God, out of which we work for healing. In this respect, prayer is both formational and invitational. Prayer forms us into people marked by the fruit of the Spirit; in prayer we invite God into the struggle of our lives. In our work of reconciliation, prayer is a steadfast refusal to give ourselves over to either resignation or self-reliance. Resignation says that things will never change. Self-reliance says we can change things in our own strength. The former is marked by despair, the latter by a futile confidence in our own efforts. Prayer for reconciliation’s sake is not disengaged and removed from the realities of life. Prayer can infuse us with, in the words of Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann, a “prophetic imagination.”11