What does it mean to “pray without ceasing”?

Thomas R. Valletta

“It means simply that you continue in the practice of prayer. [Saying] ‘he constantly brushed his teeth’ doesn’t mean he did it twenty-four hours a day. The interesting thing is that in a Semitic language like Arabic, the only way you can say continually, or go on doing a thing is låzalla or lam yazil/må zalla, he did not cease. Må zalla yaktubu, “he did not cease writing,” means he wrote from time to time, or he wrote regularly. … When it says, ‘they continued in prayer without ceasing,’ that doesn’t mean they had a monastic fanaticism here, or anything like that” (Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, 2:183).

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