Jennifer & I have been reading a rather good book lately — They Teach Us To Pray by Reginald E. O. White. It’s a biographical survey of prayer in Scripture, looking at the prayers of such men as Abraham, Moses, Jabez, David, Habakkuk, and several more. With each of these men, he inspects what we can see from Scripture of their prayer lives and has some most excellent insights.

Today, we were reading of David’s prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, drinking in the beauty and honesty of his penitence.

White made (or, rather, quoted): the following observation that caught my eye:

F. W. Faber has well said that the great want of modern piety is a deep, vigorous, inward repentance, and life goes too fast for that. Rapid livers and rapid thinkers make rapid worshippers, and rapid worshippers are rapid penitents — and the spirit of inward penitence fares ill with all this.

Note that this book was written in 1957. If anything, things have gotten worse since then.

So now, as I rush off to finish some things and head to school, where I’ll be rapidly working on things to come home for an all-to-short evening before sleeping, arising, and doing it all again, I am reminded that holy living takes time. I leave you now to reflect on the words of an old-ish hymn.