The Sacred Echo by Margaret Feinberg is a simple book, really, about a simple concept--prayer. But it's not a treatise on prayer. It's one woman's encounter with prayer and encounters through prayer.
It's about cultivating a relationship. It's about respite in God.
Filled with personal stories, The Sacred Echo talks about our growing sensitivity to God and how He's working through repetition in prayer--both our repetition and His. It's about the balance of talking and listening in prayer. Feinberg ties the question of waiting for answers to prayer to the bigger picture of prayer. "God is waiting," she says. "Creation is waiting. Humankind is waiting" (p. 59). Then she turns the question around. It's not just about us asking God, "How long?" It's about God asking us, "How long?"
Feinberg also addresses issues such as learning to read and reread Scripture with a sensitivity to how God uses it in our lives and God's calling to follow Him.
I found this book to be refreshing, beautiful, and challenging. I found my unbelief sneaking out at crazy stories--and conviction quickly following. We may not understand, but we go to God, and we bring others to God. Sometimes God does miraculous things. Sometimes we can't see the miraculous. Always, we trust.
The one thing I found wanting in this book was the presence of the Body of Christ--of community--in God's sacred echos. Feinberg brought up the idea of serving others, but in her emphasis of a personal communion with God, she left out a communal communion. Because of this, at times the book felt almost individualistic.
Despite that, this book will become one of the books I will regularly recommend to new believers and ancient believers alike as we seek to know and relate with God.
I definitely will check it out. I love Margaret's books.
Thanks for writing this review. I'll keep an eye out for it sometime when I'm looking for something new to read.
I haven't had the pleasure of reading this book, but I think you gave it a supportive review, H. What you transmitted to me was that the author might be suggesting that you can't get to that communal place without first getting there as an individual.
Personally, I love corporate prayer with those who have spent the hours with the Lord and themselves in those intense individual times because when they pray together with others, They Bring It! Devotion. Outcries! Passion! Trust! Belief. You don't get there easily. The intention has to be resolute. There is nothing quite like spending time with prayer warriors.
And alone with the God of all Creation.
Heather,
Thanks for the great review of The Sacred Echo. I'm glad you enjoyed it! I think you are right that the book is "individualistic" in nature in the sense that the book is look at my own prayer journey--focusing on petitions and those things God does or leaves undone. Throughout the chapters, conversations with friends and strangers explore the ideas, the hopes, the prayers and the echoes. But at the end of the day, most of my wrestling with God is intensely personal. Though countless saints join in the same wrestling matches, I rarely get to hear their deepest longings, their quietest cries--sometimes because they are too intimate to share, other times because they are hard to put into words. All too often, I can only hear my own. The hope in all this is that the book will spark communities to come together--for men and women to share those things that God is laying on their heart and together we will respond in obedience to the sacred echoes of God. May God continue to draw you closer to Himself.
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