Move over, Shane Claiborne. Philip Yancey is back with a new book (Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?) which is ever so quoteable, even though I’m less than thirty pages in. It was just two weeks ago that I declared Claiborne’s book The Irresistable Revolution the most quotable of all books. But Yancey has such a way, not just with words, but with ideas…like this one which compliments perfectly my post from yesterday on slowing down as spiritual warfare.

“Ten years ago I responded to letters in a couple of weeks and kept my correspondents happy. Five years ago I faxed a response in a couple of days and they seemed content. Now they want email responses the same day and berate me for not using instant messages or a mobile phone.”

Yancey then quotes Thomas Merton, who diagnosed the leading spiritual disease of our time as efficiency. Merton said: “From the monastery to the Pentagon, the plant has to run…and there is little time or energy left over after that to do anything else.”