This very desire is your prayer, and if your desire is continuous, your prayer is continuous too. The apostle meant what he said, Pray without ceasing.
—Augustine (Expositions on the Psalms 37.14)
Humans do very few things without ceasing. We are by nature limited beings. We cannot always be working or always talking or always feeling sad, mad, or glad. We start and stop. We begin and end. Yet there are some things we do without ceasing; we breathe without ceasing or we cease to be. Can one of those things we do without ceasing be prayer?
Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonian church to “pray without ceasing” seems impossible (1 Thessalonians 5:17). We balk at the command because we cannot imagine what it would mean to obey it. Yet there it is in black and white on the page: “pray without ceasing.”
