Читать книгу The Book of Not So Common Prayer - Linda McCullough Moore - Страница 7

INTRODUCTION

A few years ago, something happened to seriously rattle my cage—in fact, rattle it so absolutely that the cage door sprang open. I was attending a conference on spiritual disciplines, and I chanced to overhear a comment about a monk who lived centuries ago. That monk: Brother Lawrence.

I’ve always been a major fan of Brother Lawrence, who teaches in the book The Practice of the Presence of God that we can be in prayer all the time—while we are preparing food, teaching a class, or caring for a child. Brother Lawrence writes of a life of menial labor in the kitchen of his monastery, scrubbing pots and baking bread, all the while in fervent prayer and worship, reveling in the grace of God, in deep communion with his Savior, even as he worked. Seventeenth-century multitasking. The notion fit so nicely in my jam-packed, twenty-first-century life.

But that day at the conference, I learned that what gets left out of the story is that this same Brother Lawrence who practiced God’s presence while working also participated in formal, liturgical, corporate prayer eight times a day. Eight times. Every day. Then, he prayed without ceasing. I always wondered why my experience of prayer was not more like the one he described. It’s sort of like having been given a cake recipe that left out the part about turning on the oven. (And I always wondered why my cake was more like soup.)

Brother Lawrence had a discipline of prayer. Many times a day. Ah, I think, but that was then; this is now. Brother Lawrence didn’t have a carpool, children, e-mails, committees, jobs, and a cell phone. But, he did have a soul and a Savior, just the same as I. And he did have a moment-to-moment relationship with God in Christ that my heart often longs for, an intimacy of constant and soulful connection.

So. The conference ends. I go back home, bring in the mail, wash up the dishes that did not wash themselves while I was away, and I begin to wonder. What if I tried this? What if I tried to pray, not eight, but maybe four times a day? For fifteen minutes, say. I, whose discipline for physical exercise involves two friends coming to my house to drag me physically to the gym. I, who can sit down for a minute to watch the evening news and rise to standing an entire two-hour, twelve-commercial movie later.

Brother Lawrence’s formal practice of praying several times each day was so very different from anything in my experience. I, who actually believe that prayer might be the most important thing in life, had to admit I prayed when it was convenient. I loved God. I wanted to know him, and I gave prayer about five minutes a day. And even then, I might skip praying if the alarm clock failed or someone called a meeting before 9 a.m.

But it was as though I had been told a precious secret, and I remember the excitement I first felt when I decided I would try it. I would pray four times a day. And from the very start, and through the years that followed, the practice of praying in this way has been transformative. Spending time with God every few hours means God is on my mind; I’m conscious of his love as I move through the day; I see things through his eyes. This is no state of perfection. In fact, I am far more aware of my failings and my sin, which means I am continually awestruck at the cost Christ paid to bring us, every one, to a state of grace. This new practice has become a lovely swirl of holy consciousness, repentance, gratitude, and substantive blessing.

In this book I will share my journey, step by step, as I moved—sometimes smoothly, sometimes by fits and starts—to a new way to pray, a new way to live. This will be a conversation, an exploration of the meaning and the practice of this thing called prayer, and it will be a guidebook, offering nuts-and-bolts, practical help to get from here to there, from longing and dissatisfaction to a daily, hourly practice of heart-blessing, life-changing, not-at-all-common prayer. But, with God’s help, it is prayer that can be common for us all.

We know that it is possible to read a hundred books on prayer and still not pray. But it is my hope—and yes, my oft-prayed prayer—that this book will help you to discover why that is the case and what might be the remedy. I pray this book will not only help you learn about prayer but indeed will also help you come to pray.

We who are disciples of God, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, share one sneaky suspicion, which is that prayer may be the pathway to the meeting of our needs, needs we may hide well—even from ourselves—but needs that define who we are and how we live. In our quiet moments, when we stop long enough to realize those vague feelings that something might be missing in our lives, we suspect that something might be God. And yet, we do not pray. Or if we do, we do not pray as we might, as we suspect in our heart of hearts that we are meant to pray. But—and this is one gigantic but—God is faithful. It is his pleasure to draw our hearts to him. He does not bless us based upon our efforts, but based entirely on who and what he is. It is God who enables us to conform to his design for us. And, without any doubt, we are designed to pray.

In that spirit, in the Spirit, I offer you here a bit of help along the way, and may you then help others, as we use our lives to pray.