Empty Hands

We all go through periods of dryness in our prayers, don't we? I doubt . . . . whether they are necessarily a bad symptom. I sometimes suspect that what we feel to be our best prayers are really our worst, that what we are enjoying is the satisfaction of apparent success, as in executing a dance or reciting a poem. Do our prayers sometimes go wrong because we insist on trying to talk to God when He wants to talk with us. Joy tells me that once, years ago, she was haunted one morning by a feeling that God wanted something of her, a persistent pressure like the nag of a neglected duty. And till mid-morning she kept wondering what it was. But the moment she stopped worrying, the answer came through as plain as a spoken voice. It was, "I don't want you to do anything. I want to give you something"; and immediately her heart was peace and delight. St. Augustine says, "God gives where He can find empty hands." A man whose hands are full of parcels can't receive a gift. Perhaps these parcels are not always sins or earthly cares, but sometimes our own fussy attempts to worship Him our way. Incidentally, what most often interrupts my own prayers is not great distractions but tiny ones - things one will have to do or avoid in the course of the next hour.

C.S.Lewis, Letters to an American Lady, 1975