Dietrich Bonhoeffer once offered a famous piece of advice to a young couple on their wedding day: “Today, you are young and very much in love and you think that your love can sustain your marriage. It can’t. Let your marriage sustain your love.”11 Prayer is about love, and that means it cannot be sustained on fluttery feelings, good intentions, and spontaneous moments alone. It needs a container, something like the fidelity of a marriage, a set of practices or rituals within which that love can grow, mature, and blossom.
