A book review
Friday, June 3, 2022
If your spirit spins in perplexity, then Tish Harrison Warren ‘s Prayers in the Night may be part of God’s intervention for your summer soul. Boldly written with a disciple’s vision, Warren’s invitation to think and experience faith, resounds with encouragement. However, this is no walk through the world of an imaginary and gayly spiritual Goldilocks. There is active, flowing, ponding blood in these pages.
Drawing from a strong tradition of faith the author calls readers into being. Written from a first person perspective she does not hesitate to open her own life, setting out in the first pages, pain’s anguish in perinatal loss. Life and work also find a place in her words.
Seldom do books call me to a second and immediate reading. Tish Harrison Warren’s Prayers in the Night is the exception to my pattern of spiritual listening. I find the book a cogent and carefully framed helpmate. I believe it well serves disciples seeking greater clarity of seeing God’s work in us.
A sample: “Compline speaks to God in the dark. And that’s what I had to learn to do—to pray in the darkness of anxiety and vulnerability, in doubt and disillusionment. It was Compline that gave words to my anxiety and grief and allowed me to reencounter the doctrines of the church not as tidy little antidotes for pain, but as a light in darkness, as good news” (p.19).
For more on Compline and its role in the author’s life, see the book’s Prologue and Chapter One—you’ll find faith and practice, surely a worthy strategy to engage Christ’s call.
Thank you for reading. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. May your summer be filled with goodreads and time enough to digest them into reality.
And still we pray for Ukraine
Dr. Andrew Simkins 