Praying the Way Jesus Prayed
It was amazing to me…amazing that I had heard a hundred times over the Psalmist’s saying, “Seven times a day do I praise Thee,” and never bothered to ask what he was talking about; amazing that even though I knew Jews prayed at set times each days and that Muslims are likewise called to their prayers at five set times a day, I had never wondered where the discipline came from and whether or not it was also part of my own heritage which had somehow got misplaced along the way; amazing that the prayers I was offering were the same ones being offered by thousands of Christians in my time zone at exactly the same time I was offering them, as if we were indeed a cloud of witnesses and a great company of believers; amazing that the prayers I was offering were in large part the same prayers of praise and worship that my Lord had prayed and offered; amazing that increasingly as I prayed I could hear, as one friend of mine now says, “a thousand’s thousand voices” joining mine across all that is or has been or will be.

--Phyllis Tickle
from “What Drew Me In and Kept Me Practicing Fixed-Hour Prayer”