For in the life of prayer we bring ourselves into an openness that makes it possible for us to be freshly aware of God’s presence. It is not that [God] is not present at other times but that by this voluntary act of ours, the act of prayer, we are enabled to break with our outer preoccupations and to become aware of the presence and of what that presence does to search and to transform and to renew us and to send us back into life again.  – Douglas V. Steere