Craig T. Owens

C.S. Lewis nails me with this quote from Letters To Malcolm—

“Well, let’s now at any rate come clean. Prayer is irksome. An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome. When it is over, this casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are delighted to finish. While we are at prayer, but not while we are reading a novel or solving a crossword puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us….

Now the disquieting thing is not simply that we skimp and begrudge the duty of prayer. The really disquieting thing is it should be numbered among duties at all. For we believe that we were created ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ And if the few, the very few, minutes we now spend on intercourse with God are a burden to us rather than a delight, what then?… 

The painful effort which prayer involves is not proof that we are doing something we were not created to do. 

If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be a delight. Someday, please God, it will be.”

I don’t know about you, but this convicts me.

I want to be delighted for my prayer times. When I think that the Creator of the universe wants me to spend time with Him in prayer, how could this not be a delight?!