Prayer in the Night - by Tish Harrison Warren (Hardcover)

About the Book

How can we trust God in the dark? Framed around a nighttime prayer of Compline, Tish Harrison Warren explores human vulnerability, suffering, and God's seeming absence as she recalls her own experience navigating a time of doubt and loss. 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.

Book Synopsis

ECPA Christian Book of the Year; Christianity Today Book of the Year

An Honest, Prayerful Approach to the Difficulty of Ordinary Life

How can we trust God in the dark?

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 that practices of prayer "gave words to my anxiety and grief and allowed me to reencounter the doctrines of the church not as tidy little antidotes for pain, but as a light in darkness, as good news."

In Prayer in the Night, you'll find:

• An exploration of the real struggles of everyday life, framed around a nighttime prayer of Compline
• Discussion questions to jumpstart group conversations, and
• Practices that offer practical, achievable ways to put Tish's wisdom into action.

Where do you find comfort when you 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.

Review Quotes

"Prayer in the Night is another radiant example of wisdom formed in the crucible of suffering. As a priest who finds she can't pray, Tish Harrison Warren finds God in our harrowing vulnerability--and stubbornly holds to believing that God remains good even when life is not. This is a book I'll turn to again and again when life is upended. It's a book I will put into the hands of suffering friends. Prayer in the Night is a book that sings, even as it weeps."

--Jen Pollock Michel, author of Surprised by Paradox

"I know of few writers today who write as pastorally, prophetically, and poetically as Tish Harrison Warren. I know of few writers of any time who write of the deep, dark stuff of life with as much hope, grace, and beauty as you will find in these pages. Prayer in the Night will bring to the darkness in your life a light that will carry you through the days."

--Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well and Fierce Convictions

"In Prayer in the Night, Tish Harrison Warren once again ingeniously mines the beauty and wonder of the ordinary, especially in what some might take for granted or neglect: night prayer--Compline for those familiar with the Divine Office. She considers well the implications of God's presence, not only in the midst of our nights, wherever and however we find ourselves, but also amid the dark nights of our souls. Through Compline, we are drawn to pray for and remember others in their nights. As Tish notes, 'Christian discipleship is a lifetime of training in how to pay attention to the right things, to notice God's work in our lives and in the world.' And that is exactly what Tish so expertly does and beckons us to do through this book. It is a beautiful offering."

--Marlena Graves, author of The Way Up Is Down: Becoming Yourself by Forgetting Yourself

"We pray the church's liturgical prayers at night--Compline--because they give us words when we don't know what to say, and they give us better words to say than we might give. This little book is holy glow in your hands: read it, savor it, and most of all join Tish Harrison Warren in prayer in the quiet of the night. Those who pray well are honest, vulnerable, frustrated, hopeful, learning, and most of all they are listeners--all on display in Prayer in the Night. But don't let the beauty of this book captivate you; let its subject capture you into becoming a person of prayer."

--Scot McKnight, author of The King Jesus Gospel, professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary

About the Author

Tish Harrison Warren is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, which was Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year. She is a weekly contributing newsletter writer for the New York Times and writes a monthly column for Christianity Today. She has worked in ministry settings for over a decade as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries and as the writer-in-residence at Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point, and elsewhere.