Tish Harrison Warren’s Prayer in the Night
“When COVID came for us it came in the season of Lent, and for many of us, neither COVID nor Lent is finished. Covidtide some have called it: an exception or emergency in the church’s calendar, a sustained and seemingly endless period of isolation, confusion, and loss. The darkness of a plague descended like a shroud over the globe, and Christians, no less than others, have been unsure of what to say or do, of which way to turn in the sudden and disorienting gloam.”
Tish Harrison Warren
A year later, we find ourselves once again in the season of Lent and Easter. Lent provides the space for penitence, reflection, and self-denial, but after a year that has immersed our world in these themes day in and day out, you might find yourself weary and worn by the season and its accompanying grief.
Tish Harrison Warren, who penned the popular The Liturgy of the Ordinary, has released her second book, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. Exploring themes of death, grief, and discipleship in a grueling year, Warren directs her fellow sufferers to prayer; specifically the prayer of compline from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. It reads,
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.
Warren’s book, and this book review published on Mere Orthodoxy, hold prayer as a central pursuit of believers in all seasons of life. Christian Union has long emphasized the importance and value of a seeking God lifestyle that is dependent upon prayer, seeks the Lord through fasting, and earnestly desires to draw near to the author of life.
