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For decades, Stott has begun each day with a version of this Trinitarian prayer.

There is a small leather notebook, stuffed full of folded papers and pamphlets and held together by a strong rubber band, that travels as a twin with Stott's Bible. Each morning, having read three chapters of Scripture and meditated prayerfully over them, he pulls out his prayer notebook, takes off the rubber band, and prays for friends, family, ministries, and even strangers.

Inside the notebook is a daily prayer list that is under constant revision. In minuscule print, the pages are divided into four columns: for evangelism or new converts, for people who have decisions to make, for the sick and bereaved, and for miscellaneous requests.

Each day he reads through, prays over, and amends these four columns. Beneath the columned pages is a short stack of prayer guides. Stott prays daily through the requests of up to seven different organizations to which he is connected.

Finally, having worked through the various handouts and pamphlets, he comes to an old, well-worn page with a handwritten one- month calendar. Each day has a list of names, some dating back 30 years, some just a few months.

For Stott, prayer is the rhythm of each day. From the discipline of regular intercession in the morning, to spontaneous prayer at the end of a pastoral visit, to bent knees shortly before bed, each day is marked by simple, unpretentious, direct, and persistent prayer.

This became most evident when Stott was at his cottage home on the southwest coast of Wales, where for nearly 50 years he spent three months of the year. There he took time away from London to study and write at the Hookses, a 19th-century farmhouse with sizable grounds that was in constant need of upkeep and repair. He devoted an hour or two of every afternoon to such "pottering."

One of the great pottering traditions at the Hookses was to clean out weeds and other unwanted vegetation from a small fish pond. This duty was usually shared by Stott and his study assistant and any other willing volunteer who happens to be visiting. Wearing knee-high wading boots, his sleeves rolled up as high as they can go, he traversed the length and breadth of the pond pulling up weeds.

Perhaps few sights were more surprising to the uninitiated than John Stott wearing grimy clothes, up to his knees in cold water, grinning with satisfaction as he repeatedly shoved his bared arms underwater to grab handfuls of weeds and cast them onto shore.

Then there was his predilection for washing dishes. Because he makes no contribution to the preparation of food, Stott insisted that he be allowed to do the accumulated dishes of the day after the evening meal. Defiant volunteers unwilling to see him spend half an hour washing dishes may have objected, but in this matter he always got his way.

To observe Stott washing dishes was to witness the surprising combination of a meticulous mind with the playfulness of a child in the tub. Each dish was vigorously scrubbed in the left-hand sink, then summarily plopped into the other side filled with hot water for rinsing. The hapless volunteer who had assumed the job of drying received a splash and a chuckle with every dish.

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April 2 2001, Vol. 45, No. 5