FROM THE editors March 8, 2004 Issue

The future and an anxiety antidote

Combine the words future and tense, and most of us won't think first about verb forms. Future tense suggests more than just grammar today. We live in a world increasingly stressed by terrorism threats, shifts in political fault lines, and uncertain economic trends.

One sure way to antidote a tense future is to make sure we're praying in the present tense. And it's the basis of prayer, more than the language of it, that matters.

Present-tense prayer begins with opening one's thought to a God who's always here, and to the spiritual fact of men and women made in God's image. What does it actually mean to be the image of the Infinite? Could it mean that each of us actually has a limitless, God-made nature and future? That we have a substantial value to Him, a unique set of gifts and talents? Prayer is how we uncover the good that God has already done.

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