Today is the last day I’ll be writing The Prayer Blog for Purpose Driven Connection. Last year at this time I knew I would be blogging on this site beginning in January 2009 and had started to write practice posts. I never imagined I could find something to say or write about for almost a year. This is my 264th post.
Posting something five or six days a week is a daunting and wonderful discipline for me. It forces me to pay attention. Terrified friends realize that everything they say or do could appear in some future post! The gift of paying attention helps me to listen, to see, and to perceive more fully. It sharpens my ability to identify the God moments and movements in my life. I don’t need to wait for God to show up. I need to have what Episcopal Bishop Mark MacDonald of Alaska calls “Gospel eyes” –the senses to recognize God’s presence in the people, events, and minutia of my everyday life.
The downside of paying attention is the recognition of my own character defects and weaknesses. Hawk eyes make self-deception harder to pull off. This year I recognized my laziness in prayer, my failure to engage scripture in new ways, and my quick judgments of myself and others. Self-awareness is another gift of my year as a blogger. It gives me much to pray about and work on in 2010.
So with gratitude for you, the reader, and for Purpose Driven Connection, I offer this blessing from Numbers 6:24-26: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” Thanks for allowing me to share my prayer life with you in both words and doodles.
The prayer drawing below includes both intercessions and thanksgivings. Like most years, 2009 has had both blessings and struggles. The drawing includes only thanksgivings and blessings. I don’t want to minimize the struggles or be pollyannaish about their impact. But often I am seduced by struggle as my dance partner when blessing is waiting right there to take my hand. So just for today I relinquish my obsession with struggle and choose to trust blessing.
The drawing looks to me like a giant molecule of gratitude. I hope it will continue to grow with new cells of thanksgiving.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.”
(John 14: 1 NIV)
“Jesus, enter my heart.” This prayer was the first entry on my Advent calendar this year. As I prayed it often throughout the days preceding Christmas, it morphed into other variations: “Enter my heart, Lord Jesus.” “Loving Jesus, enter my heart.”
This short prayer includes both praise–”Lord Jesus” or “Loving Jesus” and petition–“Enter my heart.” In his book The Breath of Life: A Simple Way to Pray, Ron DelBene calls this one-line communication with God a breath prayer. The purpose of a breath prayer is to say it so often that it becomes as natural and unconscious as our breath. It moves us toward the impossible challenge to “pray unceasingly” (1Thessalonians 5:17) and to continually marinate ourselves in God’s presence.
The most famous breath prayer is the Jesus Prayer–”Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” This prayer has been around since the sixth century and might have its origins in Luke 18:13 when the tax collector beats his chest and prays, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
I have prayed the Jesus Prayer countless times when no other words would come to me. But Ron helped me to find my own breath prayers. In his book, he teaches readers to find a breath prayer tailor-made for them. “I believe that a personalized prayer which arises from individual need clarifies who I am and thus helps me understand my relationship with God.”
For now my breath prayer is “Loving Jesus, enter my heart.” But the time will come when I will need a new prayer with a new form of praise and a new petition.
Today is the fourth day of Christmas. As predicted, some of our neighbors have taken down their Christmas lights and trees. Ours will linger for at least another week, maybe longer.
With all the hustle and bustle of pre-Christmas parties and preparations, I never get to do the things I promise myself. I’ve long ago given up the idea of a perfect Christmas-card Christmas–a foot of snow, our family bundled in a sleigh, the photo-worthy Christmas dinner with happy and polite children surrounding the table, beautifully wrapped presents around a 10-foot tree in an immaculate house,…. But I still fantasize about a perfect spiritual Christmas–reading from the birth narratives daily with the family, singing carols together, spending an hour a day in prayer…. What I managed to do was draw a daily Advent calendar entry and read some seasonally-correct Scripture passages. But it mostly felt chaotic and uncontemplative.
I’ve learned over the years that the twelve days of Christmas (starting on Christmas Day) seem less scheduled and harried than the weeks before December 25. Whether I’m working full-time or not, I can find some day or night sit-down time with a cup of tea, a book, a good view of the Christmas tree and crèche and some Christmas carols playing in the background. So my plan for this week is some unplanned time. I hope I’ll have some quiet prayer time. But my imagined scenario of a spiritual twelve days of Christmas is unlikely. Maybe I’ll finally figure out that Jesus came into a broken world to save me, not to give me a reason to create a perfect holiday celebration–material or spiritual.
Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God combines memoir with theology. Step-by step instructions introduce the practice of praying in color as a way to do intercessory prayer. »ABOUT SYBIL MACBETH
