40 Days of Prayer: Daily Emails for Lent

Click here to see later posts in this series.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to write daily emails for Lent this year for my church. The emails will begin on Ash Wednesday, February 13, and conclude on Easter Sunday, March 29. Each day's message will include a short reflection from me, a scripture reading, and a prayer for the day.

If you already subscribe to this blog by email, you will also receive these automatically (since I didn't want to put this much work into writing things and not also have them count as blog posts!). If you don't normally receive new posts by email, but would like to just for Lent this year, you can sign up for the 40 Days of Prayer email list here. Update: This email series was sent during Lent of 2013, and then published as Follow: 40 Days of Preparing the Soul for Easter. The posts from 2013 are all still available at the link above, or in published form in print and Kindle editions.

Downgrading My Patience Rating

I can be a remarkably patient father for about three minutes.

In fact, for a certain time period of my life, I thought of myself as someone who was always patient, and that streak lasted 23 years, until I got married. I have a wonderful wife, so that's not an insult to her, but rather just a statement with which anyone who's ever been married to an actual human being can probably identify. Any self-illusions that we are patient and selfless people get thrown out the window when we marry someone and our selfishness suddenly can't find anywhere to hide.

So after getting married, I downgraded my own patience rating from outstanding to above average. That lasted exactly seven more years, until the day I became a parent. The patience rating took another major hit three years later when the second little one came along. Now, I find myself in the same patience class as Bobby Knight and the Tazmanian Devil.

I'm reminded how much I deserve this low patience rating each time my kids get dressed. It's amazing how close the wrestling match can be between my 6'7" body and that of my 19-month-old daughter when trying to put a shirt on her. And my four-year-old might hold the world, olympic, and Texas state records for longest time getting dressed. I never cease to be amazed by how many other things can catch his attention between getting the first and second arms through their sleeves.

The most humbling part of it is that whenever I watch him in the height of his dilly-dallying and he exceeds that patience limit, I know I'm staring at myself. It isn't just that I see so much of myself in him that I'm sure I was just like that at four years old, but I see so much of my 34-year-old self in the things he does at this age. I get frustrated at his distractions, then fifteen minutes later (by which time he might have his head through the appropriate hole in his shirt), I've probably told my wife, "Okay, I'll be right there," only to get distracted by five or six other things on the way to whatever it is I said I'd do.

Thanks be to God that his patience lasts more than three minutes! In this year-long experiment in prayer, I'm enjoying the luxury of carving out time each day to do nothing but be with God, and when I do so, my distractions affect me so much that I'm well aware how much my attempts at being with God are like my little boy's attempts at trying to get dressed. My attention flies from one thing to the next, but thankfully I've read some good things through the years and am convinced that God is much more patient than I am and those distractions bother me more than they bother God. And I have hope–I'm quite sure that as my son grows, the time required for him to get dressed will decrease, but nonetheless–he does end up with clothes on. So maybe my attention span will increase and I'll get better at this, but even if not, the limited attention that I can give to God as part of this experiment is surely better than none at all.

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Something I've prayed this week:

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Prayer for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany from The Book of Common Prayer)

[This is 18th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

Scripture Plaques You Won't Find at the Christian Bookstore, #18

[This post is one of a series of potential Christian plaques that we would never find at a Christian bookstore. See the rest of the list here.]

I think I'll spark a great business idea for someone with this one. It could launch a line of very high-end biblical fashion handbags. Maybe call it the 1233 by Luke series or something like that, so that anyone carrying one of these fine products can always be reminded of how biblical they're being. Make them as expensive as you want––Jesus said they needed to be of the highest quality.

My Daughter Thinks My Name is Gaga

My daughter has gone the first nineteen months of her life without calling me anything close to "daddy." She's been able to say "dada" for a long time, but it's always been clear that term refers to diapers instead of me. Until about a month ago, I was just "Uh." We would play the game around the table at meals: point to my wife, and she would say her name; point to my son, and she would say his name; point to me... "Uh."

I guess I bugged her about it enough that around a month ago, she decided to give me a name, though it certainly isn't one I would've chosen for myself. Now I am "gaga." I really hope this is temporary. I'm extremely uninformed when it comes to pop culture, but from the tiny bit I know of my namesake, I'll be really glad whenever the first time comes that my little girl looks at me and uses any of the more traditional affectionate names for her dad.

Thankfully she's young enough that this doesn't bother me, but only gives me something to joke about. It does really matter to me, however, that even though I know her so well at this point in her young life, that as she grows, she'll also know me better along with time. An important step in that process of her growing to know me will be the day when she realizes, "Hey, I bet this guy would like being called daddy more than gaga." But right now–at nineteen months–she's still pretty limited in her capacity to know me, so I'll continue to delight in every "gaga" she says when she looks at me. 

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I've come to believe that knowing God isn't as clear-cut of a thing as we've often made it out to be. I do believe it's possible, and that it is meant for every person, but after having studied the process of spiritual formation for quite a while now, I really don't think that it's as simple as you may have heard it described–at least not for me nor for most of us. It's likely that at some point you, like me, have heard a preacher or some other well-meaning person say that we need to have "an intimate personal relationship with Jesus" and then give a description of how that comes about, which sounds something like meeting a stranger on the street who already knows everything about us and instantly becoming best friends with him.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but for most of us, relationships don't work that way–and I think we do ourselves and others a disservice to expect it to work differently with God. It's true that the scriptures communicate an invitation to know God in very close ways, but as often as "intimate personal relationship" gets used, you would think it's a direct quotation from a passage of the Bible. (It isn't.) The Bible uses a lot of metaphors to describe the nature of our relationship to God, but I don't think any metaphor is used more often than that of God being a loving father, and us being God's children. This metaphor is throughout the teachings of Jesus, and in many other passages, such as this:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son... It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them. (Hosea 11:1,3-4)

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When we talk about knowing God, maybe we can find a better way of doing so than the usual "intimate personal relationship" description. Perhaps it's more helpful to talk about it in ways that are dominant throughout the bible–such as God being a loving father and us being his beloved children.

Considering things in that light helps us to see a bit differently. We can realize that the primary reality of the relationship between us and God, rather than being our "intimate personal" knowledge of God or lack thereof, is God's steadfastly loving knowledge of us. Just like children who are still very limited in their capacity to really know their parents, though they can surely love their parents and express that love in different meaningful ways, our knowledge of God doesn't instantly go from being strangers to best friends. Our knowledge of God will always have a different quality to it than our knowledge of other people. Regardless of how much I ever mature, I don't sit down and eat a burrito with God in the same way that I do with my friends.

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As a child, I spent a lot of time with my dad. He knew me, and I knew him as well as little ones can know their parents. Before his death, though, I never really paid attention to how limited my knowledge of him was. There are many questions I would love to ask him now.

Yet even though my knowledge of him was limited by my being a child and his being my parent, I have still found myself becoming more and more like him as I've grown. Because of the time that I spent with him as a little one, then as a teenager, then as an adult, I'm still becoming more like him even though I never see him anymore, never hug him anymore, never ride around in the truck or eat a burrito with him anymore.

Maybe our knowledge of God is much more like that than the encounter with a stranger on the street who already knows everything about us, then with whom we instantly become best friends. For thousands of years, the ones who have known God best have insisted that we are his children and he is our loving father. So if the way that you know God can't be described as intimate and personal, I don't think I'd worry about it too much. Maybe it's more important to let it sink in to the core of our beings that we are known, loved, and welcome to spend time with a God whose is present everywhere. After years, even decades, of doing so, I'm sure that–because of the time spent with him, knowing him to whatever childish degree we were capable–we'll notice ourselves becoming more like him.

And to wrap our minds around this: the promise of scripture is that one day, God will finally set us–and everything–right, and the limits will be gone. "I know in part, for now; But then I’ll know completely, through and through, even as I’m completely known." (1 Corinthians 13:12, Kingdom New Testament)

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Something I've prayed this week:

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. (Psalm 36:5-7)

[This is 17th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

"But Dad, We Were Having So Much Fun!"

Last night, my wife and I were going through the routine of getting our kids ready for bed. She took care of the little one, our daughter, and I was taking care of our son. The usual routine with him is that one of us will read a couple of books to him before bed. We read our books, and then–because it was a little earlier in the evening than he has been going to bed lately and I knew he wouldn't like going to lay down yet–I told him that I still needed to read my evening prayers and that I would sit in his room with him while I did so and he could look at some books in his bed. He was excited to have been told anything other than that it was time for him to go to sleep.

So I sat on the floor of his room read the prayers from my prayer book while he was in his bed looking at books with a flashlight. After reading the prayers with other people's words, I still needed some time for the day to practice praying without words, so I layed on his floor and tried to do so. Whenever I can, I give this practice twenty minutes, so it was a decent amount of time that I was laying on his floor being very quiet while he was in his bed still looking at books with his flashlight. When the twenty minutes were up, I started to get off of his floor and say goodnight to him, but he objected: "But Dad, we were having so much fun!"

We really hadn't interacted at all for the previous twenty minutes, so I was a bit puzzled at what the "so much fun" was that he was referring to, and I know him well enough to recognize in those words a four-year-old's attempt to avoid going to sleep. But I think there was another level to it also.

Looking at books with a flashlight in his bed is something he does nearly every night. It's part of a regular day for him. But it's interesting that he was able to notice the difference it made to do that regular thing while also on another level being very aware that his daddy who loved him very much was in the room with him.

Though as his parents we are careful to help him learn some boundaries and understand that it's okay for him to be alone in his room right across the hall from us, and even though part of him was surely trying to avoid going to sleep, I'm sure that there was another part of him that was legitimately having more fun reading a book by flashlight on his bed while I was on the floor than he would have doing the same thing without his daddy there next to him.

John Ortberg writes, "Spiritual growth, in a sense, is simply increasing our capacity to experience the presence of God." Or, in the terms my son would be more likely to put it, we have more fun when he's in the room with us.

A good part of what I'm trying to accomplish in living out the things I wrote in Live Prayerfully is to increase my capacity to do the things I regularly do in a day while being very aware at another level that my loving father is with me as I do them. My son is right; doing things that way certainly beats doing them alone.

Perhaps there are a number of people out there (maybe even some of you who will read this) who can live with that kind of awareness of God's presence during the things they regularly do without having to take some relatively drastic measures to practice being aware of God's presence, like I'm doing in this year's experiment. Not me. My attention flies all over the place, and I can so easily forget God, that I'm desperately in need of these four-times-per-day reminders of how, regardless of what I'm doing in the rest of the day, a very loving father is right there with me.

Something I've prayed this week:

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen (Prayer for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany from The Book of Common Prayer)

[This is 16th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

Will I Ever Get Good at This?

For all of my life, I have thought that people who have written a book about something are supposed to be good at that thing. If you think that too, and want to continue thinking that, please feel free to skip this post. One of the three ways of praying that I wrote about in Live Prayerfully, and which I am practicing each day as part of my year-long experiment this year, is praying without words. I'm not new to the practice, and had practiced it quite a bit before I wrote anything about it, but also–before taking on this experiment, I had never before practiced it this consistently over a long period of time.

So, back in the days before taking on this experiment, I always thought that if I practiced it more often (more than my pre-experiment norm of 1-3 times per week), I would get better at it (meaning that my mind would be less distracted while practicing it). For example, in those days I wasn't particularly troubled that out of twenty minutes of time set aside for prayer my mind might be able to remain focused on God more than for a total of perhaps... 90 seconds. Okay, 60 seconds. (Maybe 45). Not impressive, I know, but at least I could always attribute it to the fact that I wasn't practicing very often. Surely, I thought, if I ever became regular at it, those 45 seconds would turn into the majority of the twenty minutes.

Perhaps that's the downside of ever becoming regular at something: you might not be as good at it as you assumed when you weren't regular. It's safer to keep thinking I could do something well if only I would put in the effort. Now that I am in my seventh week of practicing it every day, those 45 to 90 seconds seem to be holding very steady. For example, during this evening's time of praying without words, these are just some of the things that I can remember having crossed my mind: socks, my second grade teacher, Elmo, hammers and nails, things I have to get done in the morning, Elmo slippers, how cute my daughter is (I was praying while sitting in her room waiting for her to fall asleep and I realized I forgot to take off her Elmo slippers. She took one off and hugged it while leaving the other on her foot.), books I haven't read, and basketball. Not exactly the stuff of spiritual gurus, I know.

But if that's the downside of ever becoming regular at something, perhaps this is the upside: if you happen to have already written a book about the thing which you're now doing regularly, hopefully–as part of writing that book–you included advice from other people who had already practiced your thing regularly for a really long time. Then, you can go back to the book you've written and see what the people said that you quoted and get some help from it.

So maybe it's not the course of action you might plan for yourself, but I'm enjoying it so far. As it turns out, I did pass on some stuff in the book that's proving helpful to me (the book's author!). Among the things that are helping me while I've noticed my lack of any perceivable progress in my attentiveness to God in these times without words are:

The problem is this: when they have received no pleasure for their devotions, they think they have not accomplished anything. This is a grave error, and it judges God unfairly. For the truth is that the feelings we receive from our devotional life are the least of its benefits. The invisible and unfelt grace of God is much greater, and it is beyond our comprehension. (St. John of the Cross)

This kind of prayer is sometimes quite difficult. If we bear with hardship in prayer and wait patiently for the time of grace, we may well discover that meditation and prayer are very joyful experiences. We should not, however, judge the value of our meditation by ‘how we feel.’ A hard and apparently fruitless meditation may in fact be much more valuable than one that is easy, happy, enlightened, and apparently a big success. (Thomas Merton)

There will certainly be days that we’re more effective at this than others, but along the same line of advice as striving for uneventful prayer experiences, Thomas Keating urges us that if we notice a time of prayer being good, or being bad, that we need to give up those kinds of categories altogether. Praying without words is not an area of our lives where we need to subject ourselves to constant evaluation, because I am absolutely sure that the distractions are a much bigger bother to us than they are to God. (Me)

So, I hope that at least a few folks will find the stuff in this book helpful in their attempts to learn to pray, but if it doesn't happen for many others, I'm still okay with it. Apparently I needed to write it just to have it sink in more deeply to me.

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Something I've prayed this week:

I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. (Psalm 121:1)

[This is 15th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

Prayer and Really Bad Golfing

A couple of years ago, I wrote about my experience playing golf, and how much I stink at that game. I'm still at least as awful a golfer as I was then, as I haven't played since that day, but then again–while most golfers' games would regress if they went a couple of years without playing as I have done–I'm quite sure I haven't regressed past a skill level of zero. So perhaps I'm holding steady. If anyone asks me, I might say I've plateaued. I don't think about golf often, because I suppose that none of us really enjoy thinking of things that are humiliating to us, but it's been on my mind lately. I've concluded that one of the reasons I'm such a bad golfer is because I have no skill set when it comes to correcting the errors I make when I play. From what I can tell, every golfer hits bad shots, but getting better at the game is largely a matter of how well you're able to correct those mistakes and get back on the fairway (or, in my case, even back near the course).

If the golf course was a map of the United States, and a good golfer and I were both starting in a tee box in Texas, trying to get to the green in North Dakota, it's possible that both of us might have bad drives that end up in Arkansas rather than in Nebraska right on the fairway. But the difference between that good golfer and me is that they're likely to get back into South Dakota on the next shot. I'd be more likely to take five more shots and end up in Boston.

I've been thinking about this in connection with my year-long prayer experiment, part of which includes that I have four set times to pray each day. I've realized that for much of my life before experimenting with this kind of rhythm of prayer, many days went along like my experiences on the golf course. Even though I had every intention of living the day in a loving way toward God and others, it might not have taken long for me to get off-course. Then, even though I may have been painfully aware that things weren't going well, I would just keep whacking away at the day–on through the Ozarks and toward the East Coast–just hoping that the next time would go better.

Thankfully, though, praying in these ways seems to be something like being given the ability to get the ball back on the fairway. Again, beginning with the same good intentions as before, I might still get off track early in the day, but rather than crawling into bed at night and finding myself somewhere around Rhode Island, I have four chances each day–in the morning, at midday, in the evening, and again before going to bed–to pause, catch my breath, and head toward my goal again.

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Something I've prayed this week:

Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. (A Prayer for the First Sunday After the Epiphany: The Baptism of our Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer)

[This is 14th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]