prayer^(7/12)

Without interaction we become hardened or indifferent

Without interaction, many of us become hardened or indifferent to God altogether. After all, God seems indifferent to our suffering or incompetent or even cruel.

Our thoughts can rhyme with our Heavenly Father's

In Ephesians 2:10, Paul uses the Greek word poiema, which literally means God’s poetry. When poiema is translated as “handiwork” or “workmanship” it misses the following important point. Poetry in scripture does not rhyme sounds; it follows the Hebrew pattern and rhymes thoughts. This means that as God’s poetry, our thoughts can rhyme with our Heavenly Father’s.

How to pray for my family

It’s my sense that many Christians in the United States are confused about our social location. We believe that we’re living in Israel. As Israel’s prophets confronted the kings of Judah with a call for Torah living, so we are convinced that the American Church’s role is to call for a national return to Torah. We’re mistaken. We do not live in Israel, we live in Babylon. We are not Isaiah, we are Esther.…

Visualizations inspire united prayer

In what ways can an individual mobilize prayer among his friends and neighbors for their community? One powerful means are visualizations. A simple map opens the mind to the shape of one’s community and inspires creative ways to engage within the boundaries of a neighborhood. It can easily be shared and further layers can be added to track any number of topics you may be praying towards. The blue markers are neighbors with whom I've had at least one conversation and know their names.…

Surrender is an act of defiance

I tend to be allergic to the word “surrender.” I don’t think I’ve ever joined in singing that old hymn “I Surrender All.” It’s my own hang-up–whatever–but I’ve been meditating on Jesus' victory over the powers of darkness through his surrender unto death and it occurred to me that surrender isn’t always a passive thing. Perhaps sometimes it’s passive, but it’s also sometimes militant. Surrender of myself to the Lord is an act of defiance.…

Prayer from 2022

ℹ️ On rare occasions I'll write out a prayer, such as when it's hard to figure out my own heart. This was one of those times, here recorded in memoriam. Jesus, I feel dead inside. The passions that sometimes take me are like that quote, “all sound and fury, signifying nothing.” There are stories of pastors and businesspeople who burnt out and discovered something better, but I haven’t even done anything yet.…

A prayer for my children

If my boys live to old age, they will see the dawn of 2100. What will they need? Above all, they’ll need the same that I need - Jesus. But how can I transmit to them all the anguish, the rage, the weeping and groaning that has driven me towards the cloud of fire and smoke? Or the joy, the beauty, the longing and the passion that has beckoned me into the courts of Yahweh?…

Contemplation is no escape from anguish

Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial “doubt.”

To become myself I must cease to be what I thought I wanted to be

In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be, and in order to find myself I must go out of myself, and in order to live I have to die. The reason for this is that I am born in selfishness and therefore my natural efforts to make myself more real and more myself, make me less real and less myself, because they revolve around a lie.…

Prayer

Master, they say that when I seem To be in speech with you, Since you make no replies, it's all a dream ––One talker aping two. They are half right, but not as they Imagine; rather, I Seek in myself the things I meant to say, And lo! the wells are dry. Then, seeing me empty, you forsake The Listener's role, and through My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake The thoughts I never knew.…

There is only one vocation

This means, in practice, that there is only one vocation. Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others.…

Few serious artists are able to live lives which are without interruption

Many people in walks of life which do not involve creation, are completely unaware of the necessity for discipline. It is not only that few serious artists who live lives of debauchery produce a large body of work, but that few serious artists are able to live lives which are without interruption. We do not shed all obligations when the children leave home. I am working on this section of this manuscript while teaching an intensive four and a half hour credit course, and neither may be skimped.…

The greatest moments of prayer come in the midst of fumbling

To work on a book is for me very much the same thing as to pray. Both involve discipline. If the artist works only when he feels like it, he’s not apt to build up much of a body of work. Inspiration far more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of the artist is to listen to the work, and to go where it tells him to go.…

We are afraid of this kind of prayer

To serve a work of art is almost identical with adoring the Master of the Universe in contemplative prayer. In contemplative prayer the saint (who knows himself to be a sinner, for none of us is whole, healed and holy twenty-four hours a day) turns inwards in what is called “the prayer of the heart,” not to find self, but to lose self in order to be found. We are afraid of this kind of prayer, we of the twentieth century Judeo-Christian tradition.…

When the artist is truly the servant of the work the work is better than the artist

When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist. Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew; Rembrant’s brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend. When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere.…

Before I can listen to God in prayer I must fumble through the prayers of words

Before I can listen to God in prayer, I must fumble through the prayers of words, of willful demands, the prayers of childish “Gimmes”, of “Help mes,” of “I want…” Until I tell God what I want, I have no way of knowing whether or not I truly want it. Unless I ask God for something, I do not know whether or not it is something for which I ought to ask, and I cannot add, “But if this is not your will for me, then your will is what I want, not mine.…

Prayer transcends spacetime

What if it’s true that prayer moves forwards and backwards in time? Intercessory prayer changes the future. Direct prayer changes the present. Emmanuel prayer changes the past. Madeleine L’Engle’s exploration of spacetime in her Wrinkle in Time series leads to trippy ideas. Like folding space to travel without using time. Or folding time to travel without moving in space. Or prayer that transcends spacetime.

Your kingdom come

What does it mean to pray, “[let] your Kingdom come?” These famous words, couched in the most repeated prayer in history, come from Jesus' answer to his disciples' request, “Teach us to pray.” Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation. One of the central requests Jesus taught his disciples to pray is “your Kingdom come.…

I am the true grapevine. My Father is the Vine Keeper. He cuts off the branches in me that have no fruit. He carefully trims back the branches with fruit, so they will grow more fruit. My teachings have purified you, but you must stay joined to me in the same way a branch is joined to the vine. A branch cannot grow fruit unless it is joined to the vine.…