Remember the story of the couple who hosted Elisha from time to time as he passed through their village and through their home? It is found here in 2 Kings 4:8-37.

I believe that the woman in this story, in her relationship with Elisha, has began to learn, maybe through him, the power and priority of prayer and it has become part of her practice.

Maybe it is not personal prayer – maybe she recognizes that she needs a mediator and an intercessor.

One day Elisha went to Shunem, where a rich woman lived. She invited him to a meal, and from then on every time he went to Shunem he would have his meals at her house. She said to her husband, “I am sure that this man who comes here so often is a holy man. Let’s build a small room on the roof, put a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp in it, and he can stay there whenever he visits us.” – 2 Kings 4:8-10 GNT

The Psalmist in Psalm 116 knew that God listened to prayers as well.

I love the Lord, because he hears me;
    he listens to my prayers. – Psalm 116:1 GNT

Calvin’s Institutes are something like what we would today call a systematic theology. It is striking and somewhat puzzling, then, that even writers of systematic theology in Calvin’s Reformed tradition do not usually have a chapter on prayer. One exception was Charles Hodge, the nineteenth-century Princeton theologian, whose systematic theology contains a substantial section on prayer, and particularly on the implications of the Christian doctrine of God for Christian prayer. See Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965),
692–700. – Timothy Keller