It is hard to believe that on Saturday morning, March 14, I was sitting in a coffee shop. I paused in my sermon prep that day to talk with some of the church leaders about whether or not we would hold a church service the next day.

Sometimes when I am very anxious or very stressed I find it hard to pray. I will not bore you with all the details, but it is as if my mind is racing every which way and I cannot concentrate very well.

I was raised in a church that was somewhere on the fundamentalist-evangelical spectrum. I fell in love with the counter-culture and new left politics and became a Christian through the ministry of charismatics.

We are surrounded by signs and slogans, instructions, advertising and messaging. The world is trying to write on your heart.

There is a story of a famous reformed theologian who began his first class in Systematic Theology by asking one of the students to open in prayer. A student did, and then the prof outlined the heresies, errors, and confusion in evidence in the student’s prayer.