I recently recommended a few of Joshua Elzner’s books. Today I would like to post an excerpt from another of his books. It speaks to me deeply–as I assume it will also to you–because he addresses the times when we feel like we just cannot pray the way that we desire. May it bring you hope, as it did for me this very day.

“I have no desire to forsake prayer, to live it behind and to busy myself instead with superficial things. But I cannot pray in the way that I am accustomed, in the way that I would desire. But how can I go beyond this dilemma: to pray when I am incapable of praying, to rest when I am incapable of resting, to gaze upon God when I am incapable of gazing? The only answer lies in letting God come to me first, in letting him draw near to meet me in the very place where I feel my poverty and incapacity so deeply. I will not find him in the flight from my weakness to the periphery, where I occupy myself with things to distract my attention from the pain, things with which I try to pass the time that I once spent in prayer and recollection and filial play in his presence. But neither will I find him in the forceful effort by which, with the vigorous activity of my will or my intellect, I try to break through my limitations and to achieve what he is not giving. Rather, I will find him only when I sink down into the very heart of my littleness and incapacity, when I let him approach me, touch me, and cradle me at the heart of my deepest weakness, poverty, and greed.

“And when this happens . . . ah, when this happens! Then the very pain and incapacity and weakness that hemmed me in before become a living sacrament of his presence! The very difficulty and suffering that I experience become a living space of his compassionate love, which sensitizes my heart both to his own goodness as well as to the suffering of my brothers and sisters, which, in him and with him, I tenderly take up into my heart and hold in his presence. My suffering, in other words, becomes a living space of yet deeper encounter and get more profound intimacy. Yes, my poverty becomes but the flip side of his abundant fullness; my incapacity becomes a living space of receptivity to the ceaseless activity of his love; my pain and restlessness in the suffering of my body and my spirit, touched by him and surrendered to him, becomes pervaded by a deeper peace and rest and serenity.

“The pain and incapacity do not disappear, as God does not somehow dissolve my limitations and make possible what, in my very suffering, is now impossible. Rather, he permeates the living space of my consciousness with his presence, such that he meets me in my very littleness and limitation, and makes this something radiant and expansive and beautiful. For, after all, what makes something truly great is not what it looks like on the outside, How much it sparkles in the eyes of the world, but simply how much God there is in it, and how totally and intimately it is held by him, permeated by his presence, and filled with the sweetness of his love and tenderness.”

(Joshua Elzner, The Prayer of the Heart)