C.S. Lewis pointed out that prayer seems to be "hard-wired" into human beings. It's totally in character for Him Who created us that He'd make us innately pray-ers, so fiercely does He desire our intimacy with Himself.
Lewis also pointed out that all who pray report the same experience. Buddhists, Sufis, and Hindus as well as Christians say that prayer gives them a sense of "peace" or "transcendence." Like those who embark on a voyage...whether tourists, sailors, pirates or merchants...the experience is the same for all who sail; land falling from sight below the horizon, the vessel's pitch, and the smell of salt-air.
"Departures are all alike," Lewis wrote, "It is the landfall that crowns the voyage." In this, he wrote, Christian prayer is unique.
It seems too that Christian prayer is unique in that it is "traveling hopefully"...with expectation.
Jesus told us to have that expectation when He said "...whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive..." (Matthew 21:22).
Christian readers surely noticed that I omitted Jesus' qualifying words: "...if you have faith."
In Jesus' context, it seems "faith" means (as it always must) believing what Jesus says, and doing it...expect that our Father will honor prayer in Jesus' name.
