Sister Wendy on Prayer Quotes

“Normally, as we grow older, we become progressively skilled in coping with life. In most departments, we acquire techniques on which we can fall back when interest and attention wilt. It is part of maturity that there is always some reserve we can tap. But this is not so in prayer. It is the only human activity that depends totally and solely on its intrinsic truth. We are there before God, or rather, to the degree that we are there before God, we are exposed to all that He is, and He can neither deceive nor be deceived. It is not that we want to deceive, whether God or anybody else, but with other people we cannot help our human condition of obscurity. We are not wholly there for them, nor they for us. We are simply not able to be so. Nor should we be. No human occasion calls for our total presence, even were it within our power to offer it. But prayer calls for it. Prayer is prayer if we want it to be.”
― Wendy Beckett, Sister Wendy on Prayer

“The irony is that when Naaman accepted that no one could help him, that he alone must go down into the water, his bit was done. It was neither Naaman nor Elisha who worked the miracle. It was God. When we accept that no one can help us, that we alone must stand there in prayer, our responsibility ends. It is not we who pray, it is God. Prayer is His business. I was going to say from start to finish, but obviously the starting must be our own choice, our own decision. We have to will to let God take possession and stay in that will whatever happens or, more likely, does not happen. Nothing happened to Naaman in the Jordan. He had to persevere with his seven dips, and only then, as he came out, did his leprosy fall away from him.”
― Wendy Beckett, Sister Wendy on Prayer: Biographical Introduction by David Willcock

“It is not that we want to deceive... but with other people we cannot help our human condition of obscurity. We are not wholly there for them, nor they for us. We are simply not able to be so. Nor should we be. No human occasion calls for our total presence, even were it within our power to offer it.”
― Wendy Beckett, Sister Wendy on Prayer