Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God.

In the gentle yet profound words of Henri Nouwen, the mystic of compassion and the pilgrim of the inner life, there lies a truth both ancient and eternal: “Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God.” These words are not the soft musings of a cloistered soul, but the distilled wisdom of one who has wrestled with loneliness, doubt, and divine love. Nouwen, like the prophets and poets before him, speaks of a home not built by hands, but by heart—a dwelling not of stone, but of stillness. In an age of noise and motion, he reminds us that to pray is to return—to cross the desert of distraction and rest again in the presence from which we came.

To pray, in the truest sense, is not merely to speak, nor even to ask—it is to abide. It is to step beyond the clamor of the world and find that sacred space where the soul and the Creator meet in silence. In the words of Nouwen, prayer is not an abstract ritual but something concrete—real, tangible, as real as bread in the hand or breath in the chest. It is the act that anchors us when everything else shifts. It is the key that opens the invisible door to our true dwelling—the home in God, where our restless hearts finally find peace.

In the ancient days, when the Israelites wandered the wilderness, they carried with them not a palace or fortress, but a tabernacle—a movable sanctuary. It was their sign that God journeyed with them, that wherever they went, they were not homeless. So it is with us: our tabernacle is prayer. It moves with us into every land and every sorrow. When the world feels vast and empty, when love seems far, prayer reminds us that home is not elsewhere—it is within the heart that listens.

Consider the life of Brother Lawrence, a humble monk who found the presence of God not in grand cathedrals, but in the kitchen, scrubbing pots and stirring soup. His prayers were not lofty words but simple awareness: “I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of Him.” In this simplicity, he discovered what Nouwen later taught—that prayer is not a flight from the world, but the art of finding God in the midst of it. Each act, if done in love, becomes a form of communion. In this way, the soul learns to dwell perpetually in divine presence—to make its home in God, even amid noise and duty.

But such a home is not entered lightly. It requires discipline and vulnerability. To pray truly is to strip away illusion—to bring before God not our polished selves, but our wounded, wandering ones. It is to confess, “I am lost,” and to hear, in the silence, “You are found.” This is why Nouwen calls it concrete: for it is the meeting of divine mystery and human reality. It is not the escape from life, but its embrace.

In a world where people build their homes upon wealth, success, or fleeting pleasures, Henri Nouwen offers a gentler wisdom: those houses crumble, but the one built upon prayer endures. To live without prayer is to live as an exile from one’s own soul; to pray is to return to the hearth of being. Every whispered word, every quiet breath of gratitude, every moment of surrender is a brick in the eternal dwelling between God and man.

Therefore, let this be your practice, O listener: pray not only with words, but with your life. Let your work become prayer; let your silence be full of meaning; let every act of kindness be a door through which God may enter. Do not wait for perfect moments or sacred places—the home you seek is already open within you.

For in the end, as Nouwen knew, the heart that learns to pray becomes a sanctuary of light. When storms come, it does not fear. When loneliness whispers, it remembers that it is never alone. Prayer is the road and the resting place, the journey and the arrival. And when one abides there—truly abides—one discovers what all the saints have known: that to make one’s home in God is not the goal of life; it is life itself.