A fantastic book that recognizes grief and waiting and God's presence amidst life's darkest nights. A perfect follow up to Liturgy of the Ordinary.

The reading life has introduced me to resources and spiritual practices I would never have encountered otherwise tucked here into my little corner of evangelicalism on this country hill in Maine. Recently, I’ve been enriched by Tish Harrison Warren’s knowledge of and love for the Book of Common Prayer, specifically the prayer known as “Compline,” part of night time services in liturgical traditions:

“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.

Amen”


Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep guides readers through Compline, line by line, acknowledging that night time is often the backdrop for suffering, weeping, or affliction. Warren’s offering is far from a pat answer or one more theological text book on the problem of evil. Written from her own experience of grief and devastating loss, she asks the question: Can we really trust a God who allows bad things to happen to his children? She invites readers to embrace our own vulnerability–which is especially apparent to us in the night-time hours.

A combination of spontaneous prayer and historical, inherited, written prayers are helping to frame my own conversational life with God. Sometimes, words come easily, but when they do not, this nighttime prayer offers an outline, reminding me of all the people in my life who need the attention of the tending, blessing, soothing, and shielding God who never sleeps.

Many thanks to InterVarsity Press for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.

I found this book very comforting. I have a lot on my mind that keeps me awake most nights, problems, griefs, challenges, hopeless situations, and so on. I try to pray, but my prayers just wind up being variations of "Please help!" I found these stories and prayers to be comforting and helpful in forming my own words to pray. While I wasn't raised in a liturgical church, I have found great value in much of liturgy and catechism to help me form my thoughts and consistency in worshipping and serving God. This book is a good addition to that.

I gratefully received a free ARC from the publisher and author via NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review.

This latest offering from Tish Harrison Warren is a great addition and in one sense a follow on to her previous Liturgy of the Ordinary. this time honing in on prayer - specifically prayer in the night.

The subtitle - For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep - is apt and the reader is introduced to the words of the Compline prayer service in the foyer of a time of deep personal tragedy for Warren and how the prayer served as a means of great comfort.

I have to confess that although I had known about Compline, I did not know Compline. By the end of the book I came away with such a wonder at the beauty, the richness, and depth of the words of the prayer service.

Far from being a 'commentary' on Compline, there is nonetheless an 'unpacking' of the prayer. But more than that it is a great study on prayer itself and also the God to whom we pray.

Warren writes in a very compassionate tone which seems to be the perfect fit for the words of the prayer.

If you are a Christian who prays Compline, you will probably want to pick this up. If you do not know or pray Compline, you should still look into this - it is a book that will actually edify you and help you as you think through prayer. For anyone it will help you frame your prayer life - to help give you words as you come to the close of the day or if you find yourself awake in the night... and of course you can pray the words whenever too!

Prayer in the Night is a helpful addition and complement to Liturgy of the Ordinary and will hopefully help people and be a trellis on which we can train our daily liturgies and prayers.

I received a digital copy of this book from the Publisher via NetGalley. I was not obliged to post a positive review of the book.

Having never read a book by Tish Harrison Warren, I wasn't sure what to think but I was intrigued by the premise: trusting God in the dark times of life. What I found was a book full of inspiration, conviction, and transparency. Through written prayers, quotes, and personal anecdotes, Warren has crafted a wonderful book about the importance of prayer. I just might have to get a copy of this book so I can highlight all the parts I found especially helpful (which was most of it!).

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

This title offers a personal look at a prayer. It begins at a difficult moment in the writer’s life. The author, an Anglican priest, opens her book with a very moving account of a pregnancy loss that led to a potential loss of faith and a trip to the emergency room. In that moment, she and her husband, also a priest, recited a prayer of Compline, relying on a practice with a long historical timeline to sustain them. Having such words at hand provided a connection that was essential. The author moves broadly from this incident to the role of nighttime prayer over the course of this book.

This title acknowledges the ways in which we feel smaller at night, more vulnerable and more frightened. The Compline prayer can add something beautiful and comforting to life at these times. Prayer as ritual is acknowledged and the author takes a deep dive into the individual concepts of the Anglican nighttime prayer. She is an excellent companion and a thoughtful one.

Readers are invited to go on a journey with the author. Those, both Christian and not, will take something away from this thought provoking and moving read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title. All opinions are my own.
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“What I most love about this line—’and give hour angels charge over those who sleep’—is that it pulls together supernatural cosmic strangeness and the most quotidian of human activities: sleeping.” With that, and other carefully chosen words, Tish Harrison Warren proves once again in Prayer in the Night that she is a master of revealing glimpses of how our lives in the temporal sphere meet the eternal one.
In her opening note she tells us that wisdom is a “slow work”, and it is. Painfully so at various times and in various relationships in our lives. To guide us through this slow work, she walks us through the Prayer at Compline in The Book of Common Prayer:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch,
or weep this night, and give your angels charge over
those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to
the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the
afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake.
Amen.

She helps us to see how prayer and faith are related; “Faith, I’ve come to believe, is more craft than feeling. And prayer is our chief practice in the craft.” With each phrase or word of the prayer, she reminds us to whom we pray, of his goodness toward those for whom we pray, including ourselves, and our work that proceeds from this prayer. Works of belief, rest, struggle, as well as justice and mercy.

I could have, and practically did, underline the entire chapter, “Shield the Joyous”. I tend to see the dark and twisty side of life too easily. I practice pessimism as naturally as a child is afraid of the dark. To petition my Creator to “shield the joyous”, feels foreign to me. The other shoe always seems to drop and who am I to get in its way. But I miss the mark when I practice my faith this way. I miss “intentionally and habitually open[ing] [my]self to God’s unconditional love…and practice living in the reality that his love is deeper and more substantial than any need we could present to God.” The practice of joy and asking for it to be shielded “is a vulnerable and courageous choice.” It is the slow work of wisdom. Warren reminds me of know only who I am that can pray this petition, but the Father of whom I am asking.

As with Liturgy of the Ordinary, Prayer in the Night is a book to be read both in one gulp and then re-read slowly, thoughtfully and practiced. This is the first book I’ve read in 2021. I look forward to re-reading this throughout the year with pen and notebook in hand.

I received an ARC from the publisher.

“Every prayer I have ever prayed, from the most faithful to the least, has been, in part, a confession uttered in the gospel of Mark: “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:23-25). And that was my prayer as I uttered the well-worn words of Compline that night.” - From “Prayer in the Night” by Tish Harrison Warren

“Prayer in the Night”, by Tish Harrison Warren, begins as Tish reflects back on a dark period in her life when she draws the Anglican Book of Common Prayer’s Compline close. The book is broken into four parts: Praying in the Dark, The Way of the Vulnerable, A Taxonomy of Vulnerability and Culmination and in each she examines elements of the compline and reflects on faith, suffering and vulnerability.

“Reaching for this old prayer service was an act of hope that it would put me under the knife, work in me like surgery, set things right in my own heart. I may as well have said, “Compline. STAT.” - From “Prayer in the Night” by Tish Harrison Warren

Whether you love or hate or have never heard of Compline, you can appreciate the amazing insights, deep empathy for those suffering and honesty shared by Tish. Each chapter needs time to be digested and pondered. She doesn’t shy away from the difficulties, the hardships and the tough elements of Christianity.

“Faith, I’ve come to believe, is more craft than feeling. And prayer is our chief practice in the craft.” - From “Prayer in the Night” by Tish Harrison Warren

Having unpacked Compline, Tish shares ways she worked through trauma. I love her frank approach, whilst making practical suggestions, she doesn’t imply it’s easy!

“The desolate places in my life that I most want to avoid are the very places God waits to meet me. - From “Prayer in the Night” by Tish Harrison Warren

I related so entirely to so much of this book. It made me feel seen. That the scary and horrible and vulnerable parts are okay. That even in the brokenness there is healing to be found. In essence, it creates hope and shows a way forward, a constellation of stars in the dark night!

“There is much we cannot know of God. Therefore, to be a Christian is to honor ambiguity. It requires a willingness to endure mystery and to admit that there are limits to human knowledge. God has us on a “need to know basis,” and there is much it seems that we don’t need to know.“ - From “Prayer in the Night” by Tish Harrison Warren

I can’t highly recommend the book highly enough! It’s amazing and needed and perfectly timed. It’s a five out five on the enJOYment scale!

A friend and I have a running conversation about surviving “the Job years,” as we like to call the shared experience of an ongoing series of life setbacks that brought chronic and acute grief, suffering, and a general upending of our American sense of agency and control over our lives. One of the main themes of the “Job years” experience is endurance in the faith and trying to locate God in the midst of turmoil and darkness, when “positive thinking” is of no avail and prayers don’t seem to be answered in the ways we hope for.

Tish Harrison Warren’s own “Job year” led her to the same questions, and ultimately to some of the great treasures of the church: the historic prayers of the church and the unchanging Word of God.

The result of her time processing these events is this book, “Prayer in the Night.” It is a lovely, beautifully written meditation based on a collect from the night prayers of Compline, a reflection that touches on the nature of prayer, vulnerability, suffering, theodicy, beauty, joy, hope, and the way that liturgical tradition forms spirituality.

Rev. Warren has a gift for gently leading readers down the spiritual paths that prayers of the church offer, and pointing us toward Christ and the realities of the faith that exist both with our emotions and lived experiences, and outside our current emotions and lived experience. Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and Harrison directs us to remember that truth. This faith is handed down to us by countless generations of believers who prayed these same prayers through war, famine, plague, persecution, injustice, and other situations of such suffering that it’s almost hard for our 21st century minds to comprehend. Yet Warren’s writing is warm and relevant, drawing the historic liturgy close into our current cultural context and demonstrating how the guiding lights of the historic church reach into our present moment and help to keep us grounded, able to “endure this mystery of theodicy.”

At its core, much of the book is about praying when it’s hard to pray – when doubt is stronger than faith, in times of suffering, in times of spiritual exhaustion, in times when emotions and experience cloud our view of God.

It is a much-needed balm for this particular time, and a wonderful, life-giving read for Christians and skeptics alike.

Do you need help to pray in a world that is both, good and cruel?
Tish Harrison Warren's book "Prayer in the Night. For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep", published by InterVarsity Press fits well into this season of Covid-19 although she wrote her manuscript before Covid-19 hit and her goal goes way beyond it, e.g. seeing grief as part of the everyday experience of being human in a world that is both good and cruel (p. 39). The book is divided into four parts: 1) Praying in the Dark, 2) The Way of the Vulnerable, 3) A Taxonomy of Vulnerability, and 4) Culmination. Wis a book I would have longed for to have when I went through struggles in my own family a good decade ago, it is a book I will revisit again and again. Tish's statement: "For one, we must learn to weep. This is not something that comes naturally for many of us. We have to let ourselves notice, admit, and experience sadness. And we resist this in all kinds of ways, as individuals, as a culture, and as a church. This prayer from Compline doesn’t allow us to ignore grief. It reminds us of those who weep, because we all know, deep down, that every night people are weeping—and on one night or another, each of us will too (p. 41)" touched me profoundly.
Tish shares from her own life as well as from the lives of others. Her discussion questions and suggested practices gets readers engaged and the discussion questions can also be a help for group studies. Extensive notes are a help for reference and further studies. I highly recommend the book for everybody who struggles with trusting God in the dark and for those who want to come alongside those who struggle, as well as for those who want to learn more about the prayer of Compline.
The complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley free of charge. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
#PrayerInTheNight #NetGalley

Prayer in the Night was written before 2020, and all that it entailed, happened. But in God’s sovereign timing, its release will come when we need it most. This is a book that walks us through the night—both literal and figurative—by praying Compline, from the Book of Common Prayer.
For someone like me who grew up in a Baptist tradition, praying a scripted prayer may seem totally foreign and stiff. To us, Warren writes:
“But over a lifetime, the ardor of our belief will wax and wane. This is a normal part of Christian life. The inherited prayers and practices of the church tether us to belief, far more securely than our own vacillating perspective or self-expression.”
With that, she begins to walk us through Compline line by line. We consider what it means to watch, weep, or work, and how coming to God in those states steadies us through the long night.
I loved this book, both for its content and its style, which is beautiful without being syrupy or flowery.
If you enjoyed Liturgy of the Ordinary, you will find more to enjoy of this author’s wisdom here. But really, this is a book for all of us, in a time when our souls are weary, or when we need a guide to pray.

This is truly an insider look at praying the hours, specifically compline. Good storytelling, exegetical teaching and church history. I like Warren's writing and will continue to learn from her teaching.

The evolution of my relationship with prayer is ongoing. The prayers from the Book of Common Prayer came into life only in the past couple of years. The prayer from Compline jumped out at me as a health care worker. “Keep watch with those who work or watch or weep this night.” So much of the heartache of life weighs us down at night. Knowing that this prayer is being spoken was deeply encouraging to me.

When I saw this book was coming I knew that I would read it as I sat up nursing my newborn, walking the floor with her, and it would be the perfect companion to my nights. Prayer In The Night is about unpacking the pain that leads to wakeful nights. It is about the journey thru grief, the living of faith day in and day out. One of my favorite lines reads,”Faith, I have come to believe, is more craft than feeling. And prayer is our chief practice in that craft. “

Tish will guide you thru prayer as a lesson in imperfect human practice. We don’t know what we are doing, but that is not the point. Tish will give you the space to be imperfect, and to never improve. Let that be the grace you need for prayer always, to be imperfect.

Just a beautiful book about loss and longing and how prayer helps to shape & carry you through the struggles of life. I was really challenged & comforted by it. It's a book for 2020 for sure and one I will turn to again.

They say timing is everything, and while Tish Harrison Warren’s Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep would have stood out among the many books on prayer at any time, it is particularly relevant in the age of Covid when so many people find themselves working, watching, or weeping in the face of uncertainty. Warren, a priest in the Anglican Church, opens her book describing her life threatening miscarriage. Amid the pain and confusion of the frantic treatment to stop her bleeding, Warren and her husband, also a priest, decide to pray the Compline. From the book of Common Prayer, the Compline is the last prayer of the day, designed for the nighttime to reflect on God’s love and protection.Warren affirms the need for traditional, formal prayer as well as the “free form” prayer familiar to most of us. Her heartfelt treatise, arguing for the essentiality of “other peoples’ words” to sustain our faith, is at once challenging and comforting, reminding us that when our worlds are shaken, we are strengthened by the very traditions which we tend to eschew during more certain times. Verdict: An accessible and timely book on the power of prayer.

I’m a recovering evangelical who has been rediscovering the faith through liturgical practice the last few years, so I was really excited to see Tish Harrison Warren’s new book about prayer. Her previous book - Liturgy of the Ordinary - is a must read.

This book walks us through the Compline prayer by dissecting it phrase by phrase. For each phrase, Warren weaves together a narrative that mixes history, personal narrative and reflections on her own ministry. The through line is her own experience in 2017 having lost a parent and had two miscarriages. How do we walk through tragedy, loss, and vulnerability while trusting that God is still good and that God still loves us?

I enjoyed this a lot and will definitely recommend it. One thing I wish she did differently was have a more robust conversation about disability. The chapters on embodiment and affliction focused, I thought, presented a good opportunity to explore how we continue to trust God in the face of long term disability and that theme was never deeply explored.

Thanks to IVP and NetGalley for the early copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are only mine.

While I have long had an affinity for the compline prayer that inspired this book, I enjoyed Prayer in the Night even more than I thought I would. Warren is tender and gracious as she looks at the different moments of the compline prayer but she does not shy away from calling the reader to a higher place. I recommend this for anyone who is watching, waiting, weeping, or knows someone who is.

I am absolutely in love with this book. Her writing feels friendly, informative, and caring that I found myself taking it slowly to savor the content. And found it to be my before I fall asleep reading each night. It is a beautiful book!

Tish Harrison Warren uses this book to walk us through the evening liturgical prayer of Compline. She opens with a story of when it ministered to her in a time of pain and then weaves the importance of it in with her stories. As someone not as familiar with the liturgical prayer rhythms, I was surprised at how resonant her discussion of it was. Especially in this season, the comfort found in each clause of this prayer was palpable and her words spoke through that prayer to keep it alive and connecting to many more.

I think the last time I heard of a book that revolved around a single prayer, it was the prayer of Jabez and that was a *whole thing* in the evangelical/charismatic world 20 years ago. So I’ll admit to being a little unsure when Tish Harrison Warren, whose Liturgy of the Ordinary I loved, announced that her next book would be about a prayer from Compline, the bedtime prayer service of the Anglican/Episcopal church. I’ve been familiar with the prayer for a while and I’ve always been struck by its beauty, but I didn’t know how Warren could pull it off.

For those of you not familiar with it, this is the prayer:
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

Warren spends a chapter on each clause (more or less), exploring what it means to her, what it’s meant to the church, historically, and why it still means so much to pray those words. The result is a beautiful book, a companion for the dark hours. I was struck over and over again by her gift with words, her ways of phrasing things. If you’ve ever been told that there’s no power, no feeling, no presence of the Spirit in these old, written prayers of the church, this is the book to show you how wrongheaded those assumptions are. I do want to provide a content warning for miscarriage and pregnancy loss though, because Warren tells the story of the two miscarriages she suffered that drover her back to praying Compline.