Well I thought I would pick an easy topic to discuss tonight…… not… (does anyone still say that?)

I guess I have being thinking about prayer a lot lately but thinking about it is a lot easier than actually doing it as Eugene Peterson (The Message guy) puts it:

“Getting started is easy enough. The impulse to pray is deep within us, at the very centre of our created being, and so practically anything will do to get us started – Help and Thanks are our basic prayers. But honesty and thoroughness don’t come quite as spontaneously.”

That’s true for me. I want to pray desperately I do but being thorough and honest is so hard. Staying focused and not letting the mind waunder is almost impossible and if I am honest here I probably find even the basic prayers of Help and Thanks hard as I struggle with intercessary prayer adn so often those things become intercessary.

However Eugene goes on to say one of the things that I have found most comforting recently. I think this is something I know on an intellectual level or something I feel is true for everyone else but not somthing I really feel deep inside me is for me also. I gues that is what I am working on.

“Untutored, we tend to think that prayer is what good people do when they are doing their best. It is not. Inexperienced, we suppose that there must be an “insider” language that must be acquired before God takes us seriously in our prayer. There is not. Prayer is elemental, not advanced language. It is means by which our language becomes honest, true and personal in response to God.”