A prayer for today: O Lord, the true and living God, we live in a generation of fools, among those who assert, loudly and insistently, that there is no God. But we also live among those more insidious atheists, who will say that there is a God, but who live as if they will never have to answer to you. Keep us from falling into that sort of practical atheism. Keep us from rote prayers and the motions of religious ritual. Fill us with the life of your Spirit. Plow up the fallow ground of our hearts and sow within us the fertile seeds of true spiritual life. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. (Psalm 53)