As you may have noticed in my note to myself at the sidebar, I am participating this month in NAPRAMOGO (or something like that), a month long, fifteen extra minutes of daily prayer event. To be truthful, before this, there were days I would forget to pray. Oh, i would say grace before meals, and an occasional short but heartfelt "God help me" or "God help them". But there were some days when I did not make time. I hope that when November is over, it will have become a habit for me to pray as soon as I get to my blog page, which is kind of my headquarters from where I reach out to the rest of the blogging world (doesn't those to words together sound like some sort of curse? "BLOGGING WORLD!" ).
Anyway, todays prayer exercise at www.prayer2008.blogspot.com was to just put myself into the presence of God, without bringing my laundry list of requests with me. It was more of a struggle than I would have thought, but the thought came to me that my problem was learning to be in the moment, not just in prayer, but in many places in my life. I talk to my mom and husband about later today, tomorrow, next week, or next year. I rarely just enjoy the moment and say "this is nice!" I couldn't even get through fifteen minutes of prayer without thinking "I should write down somewhere that I need to learn to be in the moment!" Still, I feel like I learned something about myself, and that if I don't push this to the back of my mind to deal with later, but struggle with the now now, it would be significant.
God bless you!
P.S. I did figure out that "in the moment" would be a good time to thank God and tell Him that I love Him. It was a much nicer time than it is when I add that in my laundry list. I hope that God doesn't mind that I am writing about the whole thing. Oh well, out of all my sins, I'm sure this isn't the biggest...
Friday, November 14, 2008
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3 comments:
Thanks for sharing this. I TOTALLY struggle with being in the moment. I've always got that internal dialoge in my head, "Okay, what am I forgetting to do? Gotta take care of this or that."
The absolute worst is during communion when my mind wanders. I'm supposed to set aside this very short time once a week to focus only on Christ's sacrifice -- to be in the moment as you said, and often I can't even do that. Long way to go. I've got a long, long way to go.
word verification: redfallo (not sure what a "fallo" is, but red's my favorite color!) Hey look, a chicken!
Hi Helen.
Here is a story that might help. A cowboy goes into Church and leaves his horse outside. In Church he tries to participate but keeps asking God to make sure his horse doesn't run away. Eventaully God says...look, go outside, tie up your horse, then come back in and we can commune together.
Why not try firstly giving Jesus your laundry list, and THEN trusting Him to deal with it (perhaps visualise Him putting it in His pocket and giving you a 'consider it done' wink). When you let yourself trust that He is in fact God, and has heard your prayers and has them in His heart, then you may feel more free to relax and commune with Him in a silent and intimate way. Maybe ask Him how His day has been and see what happens - lol
Thanks Pip. That is a good idea. Getting the list out of the way and then putting it behind me should work. I never thought of asking God how His day has been. That is a good one.
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