God and Prayer

"He is in heaven, on his throne..  That is his supreme existence.  He is there facing our desires, our needs great and small, our ideals and principles, our wisdom and our stupidity, our humanity and our animality.  There is the Judge, the King who disposes of us, who sometimes rules against us, but in any case over us always.  He is ever the same and yet never the same, because he is always new every morning.  He is present with us at every instant, and he is eternal only by being present with us.  He is free grace and gracious freedom, the person to whom all is submitted, all is entrusted, and in whose hands all can and must serve, have served, and will serve.  He is, in a few words, the one whom we address not by our own initiative, but because we are invited, called, to do so.  We have the freedom to come to him.  This freedom is given to us; it is not of ourselves, it is not natural.  It is the freedom of the children of God, the freedom of the Word and of the Spirit.

Karl Barth, Prayer (26).