Adventures in Prayer: Meditative Prayer
Chapter 13 is entitled Meditative Prayer. I have never much understood the practice of meditation, perhaps because the term has been so marred through its current, secular, more-popular meaning of emptying our minds of anything that is good and allowing ridiculousness to fill it up while we twist our bodies into strange knots. But this chapter really seized my heart. Foster distinguishes these two types of meditation: “It is the ethical call to repentance, to change, to obedience that clearly distinguishes Christian meditation from it eastern and secular counterparts. The story of Jim and Jogging Monk touched my heart, because I am certainly Jim, unable to slow down enough, unable to rest and let go and receive from God or meditate on a simple text for that long. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words are perfect: “Just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart.” Now, there is good caution here. I have been trained to be oh so careful about placing myself in the middle of scripture, because plenty of what is written cannot be directly applied to me. How often well-meaning young believers have perhaps “claimed” promises in Scripture that were never meant to be claimed as promises (i.e. Prov. 22:6)! But that is not what is meant here, this is a different idea entirely. This is for those place in scripture with clear meanings (we probably wouldn’t meditate on problem passage in the New Testament that scholars argue over—although perhaps it might help the arguments if scholars meditated more!), where we need to learn to move from our heads to our hearts. I am challenged in this way: I read through the Bible, is its entirety, each year. This year is my 10th time through the Bible, and I love this spiritual exercise because I love getting to take in the whole of scripture, plus it keeps me on track with reading and keeps me from getting lazy! However, as I read this, I’m challenged. Is reading through the whole Bible a thing of pride right now? Would I be willing to let that discipline go and say, read only 52 verses this year, meditating on one verse for an entire week? That sounds like more than I can handle, and I don’t want to jump from one extreme to another, but it does make me wonder. I do know one thing for certain, less quantity and more quality, at least for a season. I need God to do a fresh work in my reading of Scripture, to engage my heart more than my head.
Adventures in Prayer: An Application
Ok, I admit this isn’t a review from the next chapter in Foster’s book–it’s better: It’s application!
We are now back in school full-time, and this is my first term as a full-time seminary student and full-time Mom. Already I’m seeing that finding time for homework and studying is going to require more creativity than I’d ever dreamed. More than anything though, I just hate having to leave Dutch at home to go to class. Once I get there, I’m in love all over again–truly seminary is the most challenging, stretching, life-changing, eye-opening, horizon-broadening, faith-building thing I’ve ever done. I love learning and growing and the professors and students there are like perfectly sharpened instruments in the process. But leaving Dutch in the morning is so hard, even though I know he’s happy at home with Oma and Papa. As it is right now, we are gone at school all day on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Tonight at 5:30, Jeff got done with class and I was anxious to get home. I only have one two-hour class on Wednesdays, but since we only have one car, I just spend the rest of the day doing homework while Jeff is in class for an additional 4 1/2 hours. So, we’re tired, scarfing dinner out of a tupperware that I heated in the microwave, and we’re both drained and anxious to see our little boy. Jeff is so jazzed about his Christianity & Culture class that he talks non-stop all the way to the Gladstone exit. I’m dreaming about giving Dutch kisses, hoping we get home in time to play for a little while before he has to go to bed. Suddenly he says, “Oh no! I forgot my computer at school.” I close my eyes, frustrated. Instantly I’m ticked: Why can’t you remember stuff? Now we’re going to totally miss out on Dutch’s time to play and traffic is bad and you’re so busy talking about seminary stuff that you can’t remember … mid-thought I realize that I am a horrible, ugly, nasty dragon inside and I’m being a b—-. Jeff takes the next exit and I call home and let Dad know we’re going to be late. As we wait at the onramp light, slowly letting cars go one by one, it’s quiet and Jeff is discouraged. “I’m sorry, hon.” Of course I say it’s ok, but I can tell we’re still both just frustrated and tired. It’s not so much the computer, it’s the fact that he has 16 credits, plus his internship, plus tutoring middle schoolers two days a week, plus teaching an entire day in Corvallis at Cornerstone, plus now attending Foothills staff meetings, and trying to be a husband and father someone in the middle of it all. We drove back to school in slience, and when we arrived, even though the building is supposed to stay open until 10pm, all the doors were locked. Of course. So, Jeff takes off to try to find janitors while I sit in the car and watch the minutes go by. Then, I remembered that that morning my time prayer-journalling had been cut short and I’d wanted to continue writing out my prayers to God later. I need it right now, I thought. This is the perfect time to pray. So I pulled out my laptop and began writing to God. Blunt, honest, frustrated prayers. Then I remembered someone I’d read in my prayer book, about seeing frustrations and interruptions and asking God, What are you trying to tell me through this? So, I asked God (although I still had an attitude), what He wanted to speak to us through this little minor but frustrating episode. Just then Jeff returned to the car with laptop in hand, and somehow both of our hearts had changed.
As we drove, we now had love in our hearts again for each other and weren’t blinded by frustration. But, we both realized that what the situation had brought up was a genuine concern: Jeff had way too much on his plate and felt overwhelmed and I felt like he didn’t have enough time to spend with Dutch. Then, in what I now see was God, we realized that simply dropping Jeff’s Wednesday classes would solve the entire problem. Though it means prolonging graduation, we both agreed that we are not doing this to hurry to the finish line, and wisdom and maturity would say that doing things right, having time for family and God and rest and minsitry, is more important than getting a degree done speedily. With the Wednesday classes gone, it also means that I can just zip in and do my 2-hour class while Dutch is napping and be back home so we only have to be away from him for one day instead of 2! Yay! It also means I don’t have to pack two lunches and two travel dinners for that day, and Jeff will have an entire free day to study. And…it means that his weekly schedule is flexible in case something else opens up ministry-wise. We couldn’t have seen it coming, but before we knew it, we both felt like a HUGE weight was lifted off our shoulders. By the time we got home, we were in high spirits, tumbling on the floor with Dutch and listening to him “tell us” about his day.
We certainly didn’t handle everything right. Both of our initial reactions to the simple detour were immature and selfish. But how God is not put off by that! He still used the situation to slow us down and frustrate us just enough to show us that something needed to change. And by the grace of God we listened and obeyed. I don’t know the significance of that decision, but I sense that He was pleased by it. By simply saying, You’re right God, we were taking on too much and we want to obey you in this. We trust you God.
I pray that this helps me to be quicker to ask God, What do you want to tell me through this little inconvenience, Lord? Teach me to listen.
Adventures in Prayer: Unceasing Prayer
Chapter 11 is Unceasing Prayer and I believe that I have only begun to experience this. It is my desire! My passion and dream is to write a book, the book that already exists in my heart and has for nearly ten years, The Sacredness of the Mundane. How sacred every second is and this topic, this unceasing prayer is the key, the secret, if you will.
Foster calls this unceasing prayer breath prayer. He encourages us to start by creating our own breath prayer (a short, one line prayer that can be said in one breath) and praying it throughout the day: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Again, he is not speaking of vain repetition, but of a way of centering ourselves continually through the day, to think of God and turn to Him in every moment. One key I see is Foster’s order of chapters. First, as he says, we must learn to pray sometime somewhere before we can learn to pray all the time everywhere. I see this already. The growth in my daily, set, devotional prayer has led to more breath prayer. I am far from where I desire to be, but I can see growth! Praise God! This is so encouraging.
And yes this is not easy. Brother Lawrence said it took him 10 years before he was truly practicing the presence of God. But doesn’t anything worthwhile take time and effort and work?! The result is this, as Foster says: We become less agitated in traffic … we endure the petty frustrations of home and office more easily … we are able to listen to others more intently, quietly … we become more aware of children (and love them more!).
Adventures in Prayer: Sacramental Prayer
So, the assignment on this book was a little different than was written in my syllabus (I suppose that’s what I get for getting started the week before class!), so instead of 1.75-2.25 pages I’m supposed to write 175-225 words. That is a drastic difference. Basically instead of two pages I’m to write two paragraphs. So, these entries will get significantly shorter, but I will be also posting other reflective/soul care and thoughtful types of assignments, thoughts, and ideas, so have no fear—plenty of new content is here!
Chapter 10 is about Sacramental Prayer, and I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. Basically, he’s exploring and advocating some use of liturgical prayer using Scripture, The Book of Common Prayer, and other aids. I was struck by his recalling a period in his life where he sought “religionless Christianity”, where he sought to follow after God without “props”—no liturgy, no Eucharist, no church, no preaching, no worship services, no Bible, no set times of prayer, nothing. What he discovered was that he desperately needed those so-called props to help his wayward heart stay close to the Father! This reminded me of a sermon I once heard by the famous Bible expositor Kris Zyp (!). He spoke on humility and shared an interesting and unexpected twist on it. He insisted that a mark of humility is our willingness to submit to the rites and rituals that keep us near to God. To think that we are able to maintain a spiritual depth in our life and grow in Christlikeness without these things is a form of spiritual pride. That has always stuck with me.
One thing I love about going to church with my mother-in-law is the use of liturgy. I wouldn’t necessarily like it every Sunday, but I do enjoy occasionally it use because, as Foster points out, it keeps us from revolving our entire prayer and religious life around ourselves (as we commonly do in “freestyle” prayer) and the stateliness and formality of liturgy helps us realize that we are in the presence of real Royalty. Sure, there are plenty of dangers in using liturgy, but we as non-denominational, twenty-something freestylers tend to focus all too often on those and not enough on the benefits. We criticize what we do not know, so I endeavor to know more about the value of Sacramental Prayer.