Friend, the more we are overwhelmed by our own unworthiness before God and the myriad, sometimes agonizing, circumstances of life, the more we ought “to grasp with both hands” (3.20.12) the assurance that God will hear and answer our cries for help. Biblical faith, after all, does not teach us to approach God as slaves, but to pour out our hearts “as children unburden their troubles to their parents” (ibid.).

Reading through some old notes on Calvin’s Institutes made me realize what always gets dropped when life feels like one giant game of whirlyball: prayer. Calvin says that if we do not pray, we are like a man who “neglect[s] a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out to him” (3.20.1). “So true is it,” Calvin explains, “that we dig up by prayer the treasures that were pointed out by the Lord’s gospel, and which our faith has gazed upon” (ibid.). The metaphor is apt: digging is hard work, but digging for a treasure known to be there is worth the effort.

Then Calvin offers four rules for prayer–four rules for when we need the basics all over again. 

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