There is a persistent assumption in the life of faith that the most important things happen all at once. What Scripture resists, consistently and with intention, is the idea that the sudden is where the real work happens. The real work is quiet.

Most of us have been there—words leaving our mouths, the ceiling still firmly in the way. What if the problem isn't how much you pray, but what's actually happening when you do?

You don't have to clean yourself up before you come to him. You don't have to have prayed yesterday, or last week, or at all. The invitation stands right now—and the staggering truth is that even when you can't bring yourself to pray, someone already is. On your behalf. By name.