Each life is like a weaving, a tapestry of various threads arranged in parallel lines on a loom – threads consisting of work, creativity, talents, drudgery, dreams, weaknesses, longings, failings, successes, satisfying achievements, moments of reality, frustrating failures, fresh ideas, surprises of joy, spurts of energy, disappointing weariness, deadlines met in time, hindrances cutting into work seeming to go well. Prayer is woven in (in this picture I see) helping day by day to turn the threads into fabric with a pattern that brings forth what your life and mine could be. As history moves on, the history of your time and mine, prayer is the thread that helps us find out what God wants us to know from His Word and moment by moment ask for His guidance in the practical next step of doing it, as well as really depending on His strength to enable us to run and not be weary.

Edith Schaeffer, The Life of Prayer, p. 101-102