Starting With a Confession
Let me start with a confession… the subject of prayer can make me feel guilty.
I guess I grew up with an idea that prayer had to be a mystical union that could be summoned on demand at a set time every day. And if that didn’t happen, your walk with Christ would suffer. Like brushing your teeth: if you don’t do it every day, bad things happen. Instead of inclining me toward prayer, this just made me feel guilty. So I decided a while ago to stop feeling guilty. I had grown in my faith in a gracious and compassionate God. I reframed my ideas and feelings about prayer to believe that if God created me as a person with an active mind that it is hard to keep still, then God would love me even though I couldn’t be quiet for a set amount of time each day or summon the divine presence on demand. Rather I decided to adopt prayer as an attitude. That my thinking would be praying, and I would be intentional in offering prayers throughout the day. In the years since I’ve come across different folks who have helped me lean into this prayerful attitude.
This is Ilia Delio in Ten Evenings with God:
“God delights in creation and loves each of us with a personal love. Prayer, therefore, is God’s desire to breathe in me, to be the spirit of my life, to draw me into the fullness of life. When I pray—when I breathe with God—I become part of the intimacy of God’s life … Prayer of the heart is unceasing prayer, where God breathes in us and our hearts are turned toward God. This deepening of our lives in the divine life is the path to self-discovery. In and through prayer we discover our true selves, the self that God has created each of us to be. . . . “
This quote speaks to me of the love God has for me as well as the organic, unceasing-ness of prayer. I’ve chosen to be kinder to myself in my difficulty with stillness. And I pray throughout the day. Every day, as I encounter friends, read emails, hear news, have conversations, I offer prayer. I seek God’s presence in each prayer, imagining how the God of grace and compassion will be working as I lift each request to God.
I’ll close with another quote from Ilia Delio:
“Prayer is that dynamic, life-giving relationship with God by which we grow deep in God’s Word, strong in God’s grace, and free in God’s love to dream with God the unimaginable.”
Amen to that!
Pastor Leanne
Community Presbyterian Church
32202 Del Obispo
San Juan Capistrano. CA 92675
949-493-1502