Craig T. Owens

“We want to move closer to God, the source and goal of our existence, but at the same time we realize that the closer we come to God the stronger will be His demand to let go of the many ‘safe’ structures we have built around ourselves. Prayer is such a radical act because it requires us to criticize our world’s way of being in the world, to lay down our old selves and accept our new self, which is Christ. … Prayer therefore is the act of dying to all that we consider to be our own and of being born to a new existence which is not of this world.” —Henri Nouwen