Prayer in the Night

Adult Education Study: Sundays, April 16-30, and May 14-28, from 9:45 to 10:45 a.m.

On Sunday mornings this spring, men and women of all ages, including college students, are invited to gather at 9:45 a.m. to participate in a Christian education study exploring Tish Harrison Warren’s book, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. Led by Elder Sharon A. Taylor, the class will gather in the Hulme Room.

How Can We Trust God in the Dark?

Framed around a nighttime prayer of Compline, Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, explores themes of human vulnerability, suffering, and God’s seeming absence. When she navigated a time of doubt and loss, the prayer was grounding for her. She writes, those practices of prayer “gave words to my anxiety and grief and allowed me to re-encounter the doctrines of the church not as tidy little antidotes for pain, but as a light in the darkness, as good news.”

Where do we find comfort when we lie awake worrying or weeping in the night? This book offers a prayerful and frank approach to the difficulties in our ordinary lives at work, at home, and in a world filled with uncertainty.

Tish Warren is an Anglican priest who was serving as Writer in Residence at the Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh when she wrote this book. In the prologue, she tells us: “In our deepest moments of anxiety and darkness, we enter into the craft of prayer, often trembling and feeble. Most often, we take up prayer not out of triumph, victory, or unimpeachable trust, but because prayer shapes us; it works back on us to change who we are and what we believe. Patterns of prayer draw us out of ourselves, and our own time-bound moment, into the long story of Christ’s work in and through His people over time.” Join Elder Sharon Taylor in exploring this beautifully written and thought-provoking book, and see why it was named Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s 2022 Book of the Year, and Christianity Today‘s 2022 Book of the Year.

Copies of Prayer in the Night are available from the bookcase in the Parlor (adjacent to the Sharp Atrium) for a suggested donation of $10; alternatively, the book may be purchased on Amazon Kindle.

Note: Due to the Pittsburgh Marathon, this study will not meet on Sunday, May 7.

Reminder: Nursery care for infants through two-year-olds starts at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday mornings, and Children’s Ministry leaders are ready to welcome older children during this time should families choose to participate in person.

For additional information, please contact the church office.