It doesn’t matter how you learned to pray, the great equalizer is the prayer of desperation, the upside-down prayer, the prayer we pray with our backs up against the wall. And for so many people, scratch the surface of this holiday season and the New Year, and you will find times of great trial as well as everyday prayers of desperation to get through another day with a little grace. That’s why today’s reading from Isaiah is so powerfully relevant, it offers a short primer on how we can learn to pray with our backs against the wall.