I think many if not most Christians find it challenging to take time for something as impractical as prayer. I learned many things in school, but the practice of solitude or silent contemplation was not one of them. Jesus seems silly to us when he scans the crowds with compassion in his eyes and then tells his disciples to pray. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,” Jesus says, “therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matt. 9: 37-38). We wish Jesus had said, “The harvest is huge…so get out there and go to work.” Instead, he calls a prayer meeting!
Of course, Jesus’ call to prayer does not mean we should react to someone bleeding to death in front of us by organizing a prayer meeting (that might come later). Check Matt. 9: 35 and you’ll find that Jesus called his disciples to pray after he himself had been out in the field “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.” In other wor...