Of all the great lessons Mr. Miyagi taught Danielson, arguably the most important was,
"Don't forget to breathe. It is very important." As we learned in our sermon today, prayer is the breath of our spiritual lives. There are certianly some techniques and exercises that teach us how to experience deeper and richer communion with God through prayer. But in the end, I still find the best advise to be what I said near the end of the sermon,
"Pray as you can, not as you can't." I don't know who first uttered that simple sentance, but it brings great relief to people like me who contantly wonder what there is about prayer that I have not yet learned to practice. Do what you can NOW but keep learning.
Everyone loves a story. I received a number of comments after the sermon about the stories I read about "Aunt Sally" from Mark Thibodeaux's book,
"Armchair Mystic: Easing Into Contemplative Prayer." For those desiring to go deeper into the final stages of prayer that I talked about this moring, I would consider this book a wonderful first step. I wrote a brief review a couple of years go that you can find if you
click here. (Scroll down the page to find my review.)
I have heard that the best exercise is the one that you actually do! The same is true for prayer. Learning about prayer is wonderful;
Praying is more wonderful still!
1 comment:
I think too many times we look at the Champions of Faith from the ancient past, and of modern times (i.e... C.S. Lewis, Brennan Manning, and Rich Mullins,) and when we don't immediately measure up to them, we give up hope of ever becoming like them. We have to remember that these men and women were not the amazing Champions when they first become Christians, but instead it was a life long journey.
In other aspects of life, sports, arts and crafts, singing, playing an instrument, and so on, we are willing to take small steps and practice in order to become better. And we are understanding that we aren't going to be the best at it when we first begin, and instead are willing to stumble because we know through our failures that we will become better.
But in our prayer life, we feel that when we don't say the most eloquent prayer ever, we give up, and think that prayer is just not our gift, and refuse to do public prayer as we know that there is someone out there that can do it better than us. But we have to remember that in everything we have done, even something as easy as walking, we have stumbled, we have struggled, and we have fallen, but we have grown to master it. And I feel that it is the same with our prayer life. We have to be willing to take those first small steps, to grow, to become stronger, and to continue to work to plumb the depths of prayer.
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