So I've been slacking off with my prayers lately. Last week was ok, but this week it is catching up to me. I was praying last night and I just fell into it, the way you fall into a recliner after a hard day of work.
I'm not trying to recover a mountain top experience, because I didn't have that. But I do need to stay connected to God. Just like I need to talk to Dale on a regular basis. So today I set appointments to pray - I use a prayer book created by Robert Benson and it has 4 prayers: morning, lunch, evening, night. So I pray the morning when I get up and the night before I go to sleep. So I set appointments for the lunch and evening, which are the ones I routinely forget about. I got the idea from my time at the monastery. At first, I thought I couldn't just drop everything and pray at the same time each day. But you know, that's exactly what the monks do. I remember how at the day time prayers, they would often be wearing regular clothes, jeans, t-shirts, muddy shoes, as if they had just come in from some work (which they likely had). So I've decided to imitate that. I used my iPhone, which has a very distinct reminder alarm, and I set my appointments for prayer.
I know this sounds legalistic, but I know that I need structure in order to meet my goals. I don't have to be legalistic in other relationships (like my parents or Dale), but that's because I live with Dale and my parents reach out to me if I haven't reached out to them lately. But God, being invisible and all, is easier to neglect. And so I hope this structure will allow me to stay connected to the Source of my life and energy. All so that the next time I pray, I won't collapse into God's arms like an exhausted woman into a recliner. Instead I'll crawl into Her lap with a smile.
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1 comment:
Structure is sometimes necessary. It's not legalistic, but just an aide to doing what you're called to do.
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