Prayer, again.

 

So how do we pray?  How do we pray the hours?  How can we be sure to “pray without ceasing”?  I think that’s what In Constant Prayer is all about, in the end.  Praying the hours is just a method to fulfill the directive from Scripture.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. ~~ 1 Thess. 5:16-18

This ancient practice is a series of mini worship services, a time to commune with our God, our Savior and our King.

So how do we do this:

1. Pick a time (or times)!

2. Pick a place.  Picking a place, having a routine (such as lighting a candle) signifies the time as special, set apart.

3. Find a friend. Find someone who will pray the hours with you, even when you are apart.

4. Show up.  You can’t do it, if you don’t do it. ;)

 

This practice has prepared prayers; you can get prayer books, a manual of sorts.  I grew up in a religious community where prayers were not read.  Read prayers were not sincere.  But after reading this book, I’ve gotten to thinking.  What makes a read prayer any less worshipful or any less useful than a song that we sing and read the words of on the power point!  There really is no difference.

“The office is just a collection of words.  But words are powerful things.  Who knows what a single one of them might do to us over time?

In the beginning was the Word – and here is everything else now, including me and you and all that there is, seen and unseen, all of it alive  with the life of that single word.  From which ahs flowed grace upon grace.

Words are powerful things.

The daily office offers me rich, powerful, profound words that can change me and shape me.  Words that have been given as a gift through the ages to me and to you.  Words that can grow in me and give voice to the groaning of my heart when I cannot.  Words that can teach me to be attentive to and to perceive the meaning of the work of God.  Words that will lead me into a deeper and deeper communion with God.

But not if I do not say them.”  ~~page 138

So, I am continuing to research and some of the sites I am looking at are listed below.  I am eager to modify them to suite my life and family.  It will be small scale, but it will be something.

http://www.commonprayer.org/offices/hour_n.cfm

http://www.commonprayer.org/offices/even.cfm

http://www.commonprayer.org/offices/morn.cfm

http://www.cptryon.org/prayer/day/index.html

 

Still diggin',

Why pray?

 

Been thinking some more about this and re-reading Chapter 5 of In Constant Prayer.  Here’s some more from the book:

Do no misunderstand me; I do not believe that saying these prayers is about our salvation.  Saying theses prayers is not about qualifying to be in that number when the saints go marching in or out or wherever it is that we are headed for eternity.

But going to church on Sunday, bringing our kids to church, paying our tithes, feeding the poor or taking care of the orphans in South America are not about salvation either.  Those things are about the way we live our lives, here and about whether we do the things that we are given to do to help be sure that Christ, through his body can actually be seen here on earth at all.

When I say that these prayers are not elective, I mean what if some of us are being drawn to say these prayers not to save ourselves but to save the whole world? Or to save the Church? what if we are being called to help restore this ancient prayer as a way to strengthen and sustain the Church in our time, as it strengthened and sustained the church in its earliest days? {page 69, 70}

 

And continuing in that line of thinking {page72, 73}:

I am increasingly convinced that if the Church is to live, and actually be alive, one of the reasons, maybe the most important and maybe even the only reason, will be because we have taken up our place in the line of the generations of the faithful who came before us.  It will be because we pray the prayer that Christ himself prayed when e walked among us and now longs to prayer through us.

 

Still diggin',

More On Prayer, From “In Constant Prayer”

 

The paradox of worship is this: we perform these acts of worship, but they are not actually for us.  We do these things for God and then we are the ones who are changed.

We offer our songs of praise, and we are the ones who are moved to joy.  We offer our thanksgivings, and we are the ones who are blessed by them.  We over the ancient prayers of the psalms, and we are the ones who begin to hear “the prayer of God that rises in our hears,” as my friend Father Edward Farrell says.  We offer the gifts of bread and wine in the Eucharist, and we are the ones who are fed and strengthened. {page 48}

In today’s ME society, I don’t think we really get this; so many people, me included, just don’t do things for the sake of doing them anymore.  If I don’t get anything immediate out of it, why would I continue doing it?  Why would I fake it until I make it?  Why would I get out of my comfort zone and just try it?  We want perfect praise and worship in our churches, but the praise and worship isn’t about us, at least it’s not supposed to be.  Our offerings of praise are for our Lord and our God.  If we don’t, the Bible says that all creation will!

I have misunderstood prayer all my life, I think.  It’s not that my teachers and parents didn’t try and didn’t do a good job of explaining it.  They used acronyms such as ACTS – adoration, confession, thankfulness, supplication.  Or something like that.  But it didn’t stick.  What was the purpose?!?!  God KNOWS all that!  God is God; why does He need our prayers?  And yes, I even learned that prayer was for me.  I heard that prayer was a conversation with God, to build our relationship.  I get that.  I can pray like that.  I guess.

This liturgy of prayer – this praying at specific times each day – why would we?  Right?  The author provides a number of comparisons, but this one came to mind for me.  Praying the hours is inconvenient (much like taking a weekly Sabbath is inconvenient); in today’s busy-ness getting together with a specific friend, or having a weekly date night with my husband may be inconvenient, but it’s so necessary.  Lately these scheduled times of talking with Jason have been missing (until the last few days) but Jason has been making an effort to call me away from whatever I’m doing to just sit and talk to him.  Now, it’s not at set times of day, but the principle is the same – we are MAKING time in our busy family life to just be together and talk.  I think that’s the least we can do for our God – be specific and purposeful in our meetings with Him.

My prayer life has been so hit and miss.  I say I’ll pray for people, and I do.  I’ll ask for this and ask for that.  Very often my prayers are in exasperation – “LORD, help me not throttle this child!” or “God, you gotta deal with Jason, cuz I sure can’t right now!”  I don’t want my prayer life to be only supplication.  I want the other aspects in there too.

The author goes on to say in another chapter that we plan everything in our lives (to some degree) but we don’t plan our prayer life.  If you want something to happen, you plan it.  Vacation. To do lists abound! Housekeeping even.  Is prayer on your to do list?  It hasn’t really been on mine.  So if we are so methodical and so organized with all other aspects of our lives, why not set aside specific times of prayer?

Other reviews of this book have been critical of the content, because no specific scriptures are given in support of this but there are a number of passages that come to mind.  Daniel and his friends continued their prayers even in Babylon, did they not?  The author of “In Constant Prayer” also mentions that Jesus and his disciples were often praying a specific times.

I love this, from pages 54 and 55:

Sometimes it seems we have convinced ourselves that even though we are expecting God to work in mysterious ways on our behalf, our call to offer praise and worship to the One who made us is the sort of thing that can be taken care of once a week in an hour or so between the Sunday school hour and the Sunday buffet.

The call that comes to us from the tradition of the daily office, the call that comes to us from the untold millions of the faithful who went before us, suggests something else altogether.  It suggests that we are to worship God as much as we are to petition God.

I believe that God does call us to be intentional in our daily lives and not just fly by the seat of your pants.  I have been learning that over and over for a number of years.  I don’t know why our prayer life would be any different.

Still diggin',

In Constant Prayer

 

I am loving this book.  It is not quite what I was expecting.  But I am excited about it.  I know I have spoken with a friend or two about my frustrations with prayer and that’s why I chose this book to review (the formal review will be on Just Our Thoughts).  I wanted some more insight.  This book is part of a series called The Ancient Practices; Sabbath, the last book I talked about here, was also from that series.  I loved that book and learned a lot; I am applying much of it from my life, slowly.  I want to develop habits and make the practice meaningful in my life, so I must move slowly.  I feel the same process will need to be taken with this book as well.  Slow and steady!

 

This way of prayer – the prayer that has sustained the life of the faithful for centuries – has a way of sneaking up on you and not letting go. Which is what often happens when we come in contact with God. Communion with God is several things – predictable is not one of them. {page 11}

 

I found the above passage to be true in my studying of the weekly sabbath!  Here’s another passage that hit me.  I am learning, and I guess I always knew it, that we, as modern Christians, don’t pray enough, or correctly.  Now, I get that there is really no correct or wrong way.  But there is a better way, maybe.  A way that will get us closer to and in a better relationship with our Lord and Savior.  I want to find and learn and do that better way.  Here’s the passage from page 25:

 

In a very different context, the singer Michelle Shocked once said, ‘Politics and are are too important to be left to the professionals." This is not a jab at professionals; it is a call to amateurs.

The daily prayer of God’s people – the divine office, the liturgy of the hours, the work of God, morning and evening prayer, whatever name you want to use for it – is too important to be left to the professionals anyway. {page 25}

 

The topic of this book is the liturgy of prayer, the practice taken from Psalm 119 to prayer seven times a day.  The ancients set up seven specific times of day, or hours.  The traditional hours are: daybreak, before the workday begins, noon, midafternoon, sundown, before bed and midnight.  These are not commands by God, to pray at these times, but what a great idea.  The author of In Constant Prayer goes on to say on page 30 that “there is plenty of freedom to choose a regimen that allows for the shape and pace and structure of our individual daily lives.”

 

Lastly, I love how friendly this author is.  The following quote made me chuckle, but it’s so true!  We serve a GREAT and MIGHTY and GRACIOUS God!

 

The One who has drawn you to begin will guide you as you go along.

“If you ask for bread, will you get a stone?  How much more then can you trust your heavenly Father?” Those words from the Son of God suggest to me that God’s answer to the petition “o Lord, open our lips” is not likely to be, “I am sorry; you picked the wrong prayer book, and you are saying them seventeen minutes too late each day.”

Pick a set of prayers and begin.  IF we can be trusted to work our our own salvation with fear and trembling, as Saint Paul once wrote that we must, we can probably be trusted to pick out a prayer book. {page 41-42}

 

Still diggin',

A New Book and Topic

I know it’s been a while since I posted here.  I finished a couple of books on the topic of Sabbath.  Now I’m continuing in the Ancient Practices series with a book on Prayer.  I look forward to sharing with my readers what I am learning.  I’m just 10 or so pages in and I am enjoying the book and the topic already.

In Constant Prayer (The Ancient Practices)

Still diggin',