Should Fatigue or Illness Interrupt Your Prayer Habits? Thoughts From C. S. Lewis

From C. S. Lewis’s Letters to an American Lady:

I don’t think we ought to try to keep up our normal prayers when we are ill and over-tired. I would not say this to a beginner who still has the habit to form. But you are past that stage. One mustn’t make the Christian life into a punctilious system of law, like the Jewish [for] two reasons (1) It raises scruples when we don’t keep the routine (2) It raises presumption when we do. Nothing gives one a more spuriously good conscience than keeping rules, even if there has been a total absence of all real charity or faith.

(p. 36)