Review: “In Constant Prayer”

I chose to read and do a book review of Robert Benson’s book “In Constant Prayer” because I wanted to learn how the practice of the Daily Office could impact my prayer life.  I come from an evangelical background and I have very little experience with liturgical practices.  I didn’t even KNOW what “Daily Office” meant so I was coming to the ideas of this book with a completely blank slate.  It was with much expectation that I came to read this book.

Benson writes with a very conversational style and the book is easy to read.  It is a short book and he tells lots of stories in the book, making what could be a boring subject very easy to study.  Those are the pros.  But…

I was very let down by this book.  I felt that I really didn’t learn much about the Daily Office at all and I didn’t learn much about how the practice of it would impact my life.  The gist of the impact, as told by Benson, is that the discipline of practicing the Daily Office would pay off by causing your heart and thoughts to be drawn to God throughout your day.  That is a very obvious statement…every spiritual discipline does that.  Beyond that point, the stories in the book were general encouragements all pointing to the same idea:  it is good to do the Daily Office.  So I felt that there was a lot of repetition of that one general idea rather than a deeper look at the practice.  Because of that, I finished the book without really feeling drawn to the practice.  I might try it out but my desire to do so isn’t because I felt so drawn to the practice because of the book.  The book only helped me to understand a little bit more about the structure of the Office, but was not a compelling encouragement to practice it.

I give “In Constant Prayer” 3 out of 5 stars.

 

I recieved this book for free through the BookSneeze.com blogger program.

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