"Great issues depend on prayer, and most of us are rightly dissatisfied with both our understanding and our practice of it, but what is the best way for us to face our "leanness"? One thing we should do is look at the prayers we actually pray—whether confidently with our lips or hesitantly in our hearts. Prayers are not perfect just because they are prayers; there is false religion as well as true. Our prayers will show us which kind of religion is ours, for they will reveal to us what we are. When we examine them, we may find that what we need is not so much help with our prayers as help with ourselves. "It encourages us to laugh at ourselves, for the devil flees from laughter. It uncovers some of the false images and wrong attitudes in which we are all apt to indulge. And in revealing to us ourselves, it brings us before the living God."
