STOP THE WORLD AND TRANSCEND TIME
A MERE FORMALITY Growing up, my family recited the same prayer over every meal. When we visited relatives, I discovered the identical rote prayer was a family tradition. The only variation concerned the words, These or Thy, which ignited a passionate debate over the grammatically correct wording. Unregenerate—reciting creeds and the Lord’s Prayer at church, the blessing over meals, and the disturbing if I die before I wake, nighttime utterance were mere forms of godliness. But God. After delivering me from death to life, everything shifted. God took what I had known as prayer and graciously peeled it off like a thin veneer....
