Living Prayerfully Together in Marriage

One paragraph continues to bounce around in my head (in the best possible way) from what I've written in Live Prayerfully:

I said in the Introduction that a prayerful life is meant for everyone. Here in the Conclusion, I want to add to that statement and say: a prayerful life is meant for everyone, and none of us becomes prayerful by ourselves. Perhaps the synergy that surpasses that of putting together practices of praying with other people’s words, praying without words, and praying with your own words is that of putting these practices together with others. It might be on a retreat, in a small group, or with your family, but the only way we are meant to live prayerfully is to live prayerfully together.

Part of the reason this paragraph continues to simmer in me is that, when I wrote it, I knew it was true–yet had experienced it only in the smallest degrees. I still think I've only experienced a bit of the goodness of living prayerfully together with others, but one of the really enjoyable byproducts of my experiment this year is that, for the sake of being able to keep the commitments I've made for this year, I've been able to get others to jump in at points with me and we get a taste of living our lives together in these ways.

It started at home. Even though my wife and I, for our entire marriage, have both been people committed to serving God and honoring God in our home, we had a very unimpressive track record when it came to living prayerfully together. Sure, we both prayed, but for the most part, her praying was hers and mine was mine. We wanted prayer to be more central in our relationship, but whatever sporadic attempts we sometimes made at praying together were usually less meaningful than we'd hoped for and it never stuck.

(In light of what I've written in the book, I can look at that and now realize that this was largely due to only ever trying to pray together in one of the three ways–praying with our own words–rather than ever incorporating the other two. I remember one time, years ago, when my wife expressed a desire that we pray together more often. I was hesitant, because during that period I had just begun learning about and practicing prayer without words and was finding it to be very life-giving. When I described that to her and explained that I was in a stretch of mostly praying without words... she let me know that sitting together in silence wasn't what she was hoping for. Now, thankfully, we've given ourselves a fuller range of tools to use when we try to pray together.)

In the first couple of weeks of this year's experiment, we had to make a road trip from Missouri back to Texas, and I knew that I would need her help if I was going to be able to stick to my commitments while driving 1,100 miles. During the trip, she read morning, midday, and evening prayers to me while we drove, and we read the night prayers together before going to bed. I don't recall a point when we ever talked about it or specifically decided to do so, but the habit of the night prayers has stuck for us. The unintended but really good result is that we have prayed together more during the three months since I began this experiment than we had in the eleven previous years of our marriage combined. It's mostly praying with others' words as they're printed in the night prayers of the book, and sometimes also including small amounts of praying with our own words and/or without words.

It is never anything spectacular–I don't think any of these times of prayer together have ever been particularly eventful or noteworthy for either of us–but it's still very good. We've gotten to the point where going to bed without praying together would feel very strange to us, as if we'd left our day incomplete.

If I hadn't taken on this somewhat silly experiment, we wouldn't have read those prayers together during that road trip, so we wouldn't have continued the practice of praying night prayers together (and occasionally the others as well), and the level at which we live prayerfully together would still be the same as it had been for the first decade+ of our marriage. But thanks be to God for a wife who's made this experiment possible and who, when we feel like it and when we don't, sits next to me as we end each day prayerfully together.

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Something I've prayed this week:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan; Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Prayer for the First Sunday of Lent from The Book of Common Prayer)

[This is the 22nd post from A Year of Living Prayerfully]

First Sunday of Lent

Readings for the First Sunday of Lent:

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 Romans 10:8b-13 Luke 4:1-13

A Prayer for the Day:

O God, you make us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of your Son our Lord: Give us this day such blessing through our worship of you, that the week to come may be spent in your favor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan; Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

*From The Book of Common Prayer

[This is part of 40 Days of Prayer: Daily Emails for Lent]

Day 4: What You Might Need Most

Throughout this first week of Lent, I have tried to help us set the context for practices that can help us return to God with all our hearts in the coming weeks. In this final reflection for the week, I want to propose a type of practice which may seem unusual, but of which I believe many of us are in desperate need. What if, this Lent, you set a spiritual goal of getting enough rest? Many of us have become accustomed to being so tired that we've forgotten what it feels like to be fully rested. This is often tied to a misconception, thinking that our bodies are disconnected from our spiritual lives. That idea is very prevalent among Christians, but–wherever it comes from–it doesn't come from the Bible.

Throughout the Old and New Testaments, God continually emphasized the importance of rest in the lives of his people. Rest is a concrete way that we learn to trust God and to express our dependence upon him. This has primarily been practiced through the centuries as God's people have observed a sabbath day each week to rest from our work, worship God for his steadfast love toward us, and engage in activities that delight and refresh us. As one of my favorite authors, James Bryan Smith, says, we can't do anything worthwhile spiritually if we're exhausted.

So, here is a brief list of things you might consider if setting a goal of getting enough rest seems inviting to you this Lent:

• If you tend to stay up too late, set three bedtimes for yourself: an ideal bedtime, an okay bedtime, and an "anything later than this is unacceptable" bedtime. Then, as you go to rest each night, think of it as a spiritual practice, helping you to express your trust in God that he can take care of the things that were not accomplished in the day.
• Determine that, for this Lent, you won't stay late at work.
• Set aside a 24-hour period each week this Lent during which your goal is not to be distracted, but to pay attention to those who are with you. You might start this 24 hours in the evening, as you share a slow meal with family or friends. You'll probably find it very helpful (though difficult) turn off your cell phone. Take a break from e-mail and internet, even all media if possible. Go to bed at a good time that evening, being free of the usual distractions. Either verbally or through writing, affirm to someone else their importance in your life.
• Another way we can rest is to intentionally take a break from thinking about things we don't have and, instead, give thanks to God for all of the ways that he has provided for us so faithfully. This might mean cutting back on shopping and increasing your generosity. Or perhaps you would simply want to choose to live with the mindset this Lent: "I have enough." As we do so over time, we find that our gratitude and our ability to trust God with our needs increases.
• If you're interested in reading more of my thoughts about ways we can enjoy a practice of making a sabbath, see these two articles: "Something I Really Want but Haven't Learned Yet" and "Sabbath's Good, Slow Work in Us".

A Prayer for the Day:

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of your sanctuary, and that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan; Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

Click here for this week's scripture readings.

*From The Book of Common Prayer

[This is part of 40 Days of Prayer: Daily Emails for Lent]

Day 3: A Bad Idea for Lent and a Really Good One

Several years ago, I had a friend who gave up breath mints for Lent. The guy had a good heart, but please–if you love God and those around you–don't consider following his example this year. Of all the possible things God might desire for you during the coming weeks... I'm quite sure that there is no good connection between holiness and halitosis. Hopefully it isn't breath mints, but is there something else you've thought about giving up as a way of observing Lent? Or perhaps you've decided to take something on? Maybe you've had experiences of others giving things up along the lines of my friend and his unfortunate 40 day abstinence from fresh breath, so you've decided that giving things up isn't for you.

Giving things up or taking things on during these weeks can be helpful, but any decision to do so needs to be set in the right context in order for it to be beneficial to us and others rather than harmful. Sometimes, we tend to think that if there's anything we enjoy, we would be really spiritual if we decided to abstain from it during Lent. So, we end up saying no to things like chocolate (or breath mints) in order to really feel like we're making a sacrifice for God.

Being intentional about our practices during these weeks of Lent is an excellent idea, but we should be careful not to confuse the means (our spiritual practices) with the end (opening our lives to God) as we think about the things we're giving up or the things we're taking on. Ruth Haley Barton states the point of our Lenten practices succinctly by framing them with the question:

How will I find ways to return to God with all my heart?

I hope that you can let that question simmer in your mind through the remainder of this week. As each of us does so, we can trust that God will lead us.

A Prayer for the Day:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan; Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

Click here for this week's scripture readings.

*From The Book of Common Prayer

[This is part of 40 Days of Prayer: Daily Emails for Lent]

Day 2: Lent's Invitation

As I discussed yesterday, for years I had no idea what Lent really was. Even after I learned that Lent has been an important part of our habits in the church for centuries, I still had very little understanding of why we do things the way we do. As has often been the case for me, I was pleasantly surprised to find something very helpful right within this Methodist tradition of which I've been a part my entire life. The following "Invitation to the observance of Lenten Discipline" [perhaps could use a more exciting title, but] is part of our liturgy for Ash Wednesday and gives a helpful explanation of what Lent is and an invitation to participate:

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

the early Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church that before the Easter celebration there should be a forty-day season of spiritual preparation.

During this season converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when persons who had committed serious sins and had separated themselves from the community of faith were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to participation in the life of the Church. In this way the whole congregation was reminded of the mercy and forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ and the need we all have to renew our faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to observe a holy Lent: by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating upon God's Holy Word... (From The United Methodist Book of Worship)

I hope that, if you sense any kind of invitation for the kind of Lent described above to characterize your days between now and Easter, that you can take a moment now in prayer and dedicate these weeks of your life to God and his work of grace in you.

A Prayer for the Day:

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan; Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

Click here for this week's Scripture readings.

*From The Book of Common Prayer

[This is part of 40 Days of Prayer: Daily Emails for Lent]

Day 1: It's Lent, Not Lint

I remember a time as a teenager when my youth pastor liked to joke about things he had given up for Lent. For example, if someone suggested that he wash his car or mow his lawn, his response would be, "I can't. I gave it up for Lent." I laughed every time I heard him make one of those jokes, even though it turned out that I really didn't get his punch line. Since I had no idea what the church season of Lent was, I thought that he was saying he had given up things for "lint." Like many things kids that age find humorous, I now realize that wouldn't have made any sense, but still my middle-school brain thought it was funny. I imagined my youth pastor sitting at home with his precious collection of lint rolled into a large ball, with his dirty car and tall weeds in the yard.

Thankfully, the church's season of Lent is something much more meaningful than that. Lent is about finding ways to return to God with our whole hearts. The things we do today, Ash Wednesday, are designed to give us concrete ways of beginning again our return to God. We pray; we read Scripture, including David's prayer of repentance from Psalm 51; we allow our pastors to place ashes in the sign of a cross on our foreheads to remind us that our lives in this age are fleeting, to mark us as the people of the crucified Messiah, and to remember that we are utterly dependent on the life that God gives us as a gift both today and forever. We invite God to search us and help us to see our sin, while trusting that he is full of compassion and mercy, and then we consider the ways that we can best arrange these lives he has given us around the invitation to come and adore him.

A Prayer for the Day:

O God, maker of every thing and judge of all that you have made, from the dust of the earth you have formed us and from the dust of death you would raise us up. By the redemptive power of the cross, create in us clean hearts and put within us a new spirit, that we may repent of our sins and lead lives worthy of your calling; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (From The United Methodist Hymnal)

Click here for today's scripture readings.

[This is part of 40 Days of Prayer: Daily Emails for Lent]

I've Had Daily Mini-Lents and Didn't Even Know it

If I were to begin this blog post with the words, "Four score and seven years ago," most of you would realize that I'm probably not making a statement about something that happened 87 years ago. It would be more likely that by using that phrase, I would be trying to say something about Abraham Lincoln, or freedom, or the dignity of all people, or all of the above. If I would choose to use a phrase like that, it would be to point you back to something about the meaning of the Gettysburg Address, in which it was originally said.

On the other hand, if you had zoomed in from another culture and had no way of connecting my use of that phrase with its context, you'd likely have a hard time getting the full meaning of what I would be trying to say. If you really wanted to dig in, you'd probably get a dictionary out to look up the meaning of "score", then make the calculation, then you could do a lot of research on what someone like me might have been trying to say about the year 1926. And you would have completely missed my point.

This happens way too often in reading the scriptures. Particularly when we read the New Testament, it's so packed full of allusions and quotations of things from the Old Testament–which point us back to something about the meaning of the original passage–that we're like the person who has zoomed in from another culture and we don't have the culturally ingrained knowledge required to make the connections that the author intended. Even if we are serious students, we might get out all of our tools, dissect the words, make some misinformed calculations and completely miss the point. (If you're not convinced of this, try reading the book of Revelation. Then take a look in a bookstore or online at how many different ways intelligent people have tried to interpret it.)

I've started to become much more aware of this in the past couple of years as my own reading of scripture has been rejuvenated by capable teachers who help me to see the connections that I miss otherwise (especially N.T. Wrights fantastic series of For Everyone commentaries), since when I read these things written by ancient Jews, I'm unquestionably looking in on a culture very different from my own.

This week, I've been glad to discover the same kind of dimensions at play when I pray with other people's words. As part of my experiment this year, I've noticed two lines that come up every single morning in the words that I am given to pray: "Lord, open our lips. And our mouth shall declare your praise."

At first, being that person zooming in from another culture, I didn't recognize these as being from scripture. Then one day I was reading in a passage and noticed them, but still couldn't have remembered their context or what the fuller meaning was that they might have been put in these prayers to point me toward.

Then I read the scripture readings for tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, and it clicked. Tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, and one of the traditional readings for Ash Wednesday is Psalm 51. This psalm is David's prayer of confession to God after the prophet Nathan confronted him about his adultery with Bathsheba. It's a very rich prayer, and very fitting words for us to pray each year when we begin the season of returning to God with all our hearts.

Thus, even though I certainly haven't realized what I've been doing, every morning during the two and a half months since I began this experiment, I've been pointed back to David's powerful, gut-wrenching, prayer of confession. Every morning, through praying those words, I've been offered the chance to think back to their fuller context (including "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions...Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me...") and to have a mini-Lent, a daily returning of my heart to God as I begin again each and every morning.

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Something I've prayed today:

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (A Prayer for Ash Wednesday from The Book of Common Prayer)

[This is the 21st post from A Year of Living Prayerfully]