Our prayer leads us to engage in efforts that are difficult, controversial, or problematic. We begin to realize the difference between peace and comfort. Sometimes I will not pray other than in a very formulaic way because I am really inappropriately frightened of what God might call me to do. I say inappropriately because with every true call comes the grace to follow through on that call. The bottom line is we cannot control prayer.
Prayer is a relationship.
We shouldn' t control it, after all, because we are not God. Here's a way of defining prayer that we don' t often hear. That's a good definition of what prayer and spirituality help us to do, I think, to come to resemble what we admire. Our young people especially need heroes these days, people who are human but who have grappled with what it means to seek out and discern ideals and then respond to those ideals in generosity. Prayer helps us become like our heroes.