Prayer and the Cross

[Luther's] thoughts prove to us again that the theology of the cross does not exclude the concreteness of the 'godly life,' but rather demands it. This does not make Luther unfaithful to the basic insights of his theology of the cross. For in prayer he does not, after all, seek an escape from all the hard paradoxes. Prayer is not a little garden of Paradise, where the one who is weary of the Word of the cross might take a little rest, but prayer is just the battleground where the sign of the cross has been raised.

von Loewenich, Luther's Theology of the Cross, p. 143.