This guy, Robert Benson, who wrote the book "Living Prayer" could be related to me. It's encouraging to read the notes from his journey into prayer. Here are some things he's said that caught my attention.
About confessing our sins and faults to God:
"Confession is not only about the stupid stuff we did yesterday, it is also about the magnificent stuff God did while we were yet sinners."
"It becomes a matter of not being able to hear God's voice because we are so full of our own. We cannot hear the Word because our own words are in the way."
About monks vs. "ordinary" people:
When the bell rings, they pray. Everything is different because of that one thing."
"What struck me that morning in Kentucky, oddly enough, was not how different my life had to be from that of these men of prayer, but how much our lives could be alike.
They have a vocation and so do I. They have taken a vow of stability and so have I...They have chores to do and so do I. They have work to do and so do I. They have people they live with and people who come to visit and so do I. They dress funny, and some would say, so do I. They have taken seriously Paul's admonition to pray without ceasing and so...so could I....if...
If what?"
About prayer:
can create places
in our hearts and minds
that can be filled with something besides worry and fear
about the days that we can no longer live
or cannot yet reach."
Which makes me think of the words of the song "Psalm 91", which, of course, are taken from Psalm 91 in the bible:
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
shall abide in the shadow...
I want to live in the "secret" place where my spirit communes with God and lives in faith, no matter what the see-able circumstances look like.
1 comment:
I sent you an e-mail that essentially says the same thing on pressing in to know the Father and, thus, learn to know ourselves in an increasingly bewildering world.
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