Pathways to Prayer

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David Moffett-Moore. Pathways to Prayer

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To all who have prayed with me and for me:

family, friends and parishioners;

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At some point we pray our first prayer that is truly heartfelt. This prayer may be a prayer of confession, when we are truly, earnestly sorry for something we have done or not done. It may be a prayer of petition, begging to the heavens for what we feel we cannot live without yet cannot attain on our own. We pray passionately and powerfully, pleading for our cause. We pray with tears, perhaps with quaking, putting all of who we are in that moment into that prayer, a prayer that truly consumes our whole being. It may be a prayer of thanksgiving, complete and humble adoration of the handiwork of God, gratitude for God’s gracious and abundant blessing of our lives. Whether confession, petition or thanksgiving, it is a prayer that envelopes us, that offers our true and whole selves to the fullness of the divine presence, a prayer that is truly our prayer.

We pray the Our Father, the prayer that Jesus taught us. But do we really pray it or merely repeat it? Many scholars say it is an outline to prayer, an invitation to prayer, a map for prayer, that each petition may become a paragraph in actual use. The earliest Christians prayed the Lord’s Prayer three times a day: morning, noon and night. Imagine how our lives would change if we incorporated not just the words but the spirit of this prayer into our lives as regularly as we take food to eat. Imagine tasting the food of eternity as frequently as we feed on temporary nourishment!

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