Exercise your prayer muscle

I've recently begun to make more of an effort to get into shape. This has meant going to the gym every day. I have to make myself go every day so that it will become a habit for me.

When I don't go to the gym, it's not really that I don't want to work out because it's uncomfortable or I don't like exercise. It's really because I get bored and get distracted. I have an extremely long attention span, but staying on the treadmill for 30 minutes requires concentration on something in which I'm not that interested.

As I walking and running today, I was thinking about prayer and how many people talk about their difficulty in praying consistently. I think prayer is an exercise. It's an exercise of our spiritual muscle, our faith muscles. If you haven't been doing it for a while, it's hard. Yet we all (well, most of us) want to be like those prayer warriors we know- the spiritual equivalent of marathon runners.

The thing is, you have to start slow. A short prayer before a meal. A prayer of thanks before bed. A meditation on your day during your shower. Eventually your endurance will build and you will be able to concentrate in longer stretches and listen, as well as speak, to God.

And not everyone can be a marathon runner. Luther reminds us that we can begin our day with "Dear God" and say "amen" just before falling asleep- everything in the middle, that is- our whole day, is our prayer.

Comments

Religious Holidays in Anchorage

You may have read in the Anchorage Daily News about a new policy regarding certain religious holidays and the scheduling of school activities. If not, a link to the article is here . The new rules do not mean that school will be out on these new holiday inclusions, but that the Anchorage School District will avoid scheduling activities, like sporting events, on these days. The new list includes Passover, Rosh Hashanah , Yom Kippur , Eid al - Fitr and Eid al - Adha . They are added to a list which includes New Year's, Orthodox Christmas and Easter, Good Friday, Easter, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. The new holidays may be unfamiliar to some: Passover is a Jewish celebration, in the springtime, that commemorates the events in Egypt that led up to the Exodus. The name of the holiday comes specifically from the fact that the angel of death "passed over" the houses of the Israelites during the plague which killed the eldest sons of the Egyptians. Passover is a holiday

Latibule

I like words and I recently discovered Save the Words , a website which allows you to adopt words that have faded from the English lexicon and are endanger of being dropped from the Oxford English Dictionary. When you adopt a word, you agree to use it in conversation and writing in an attempt to re-introduce said word back into regular usage. It is exactly as geeky as it sounds. And I love it. A latibule is a hiding place. Use it in a sentence, please. After my son goes to bed, I pull out the good chocolate from my latibule and have a "mommy moment". The perfect latibule was just behind the northwest corner of the barn, where one had a clear view during "Kick the Can". She tucked the movie stub into an old chocolate box, her latibule for sentimental souvenirs. I like the sound of latibule, though I think I would spend more time defining it and defending myself than actually using it. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure how often I use the

When the Body of Christ is Fat

Bitmoji Julia enjoys tea Within a very short amount of time, two people whom I love were called "fat ass". One of these slurs occurred in the church building and the other occurred in the same building and within the context of worship. Both incidents were the result of a person with already impaired judgment lashing out at the person who was in front of them, perceiving them to be unhelpful or denying aid or service. Regardless of the "why", the reality is that the name was uncalled for, hurtful, and aimed to be a deep cut. The reality is that a person who is under the influence of legal or illegal substances and often displays impaired judgment can still tell that body shaming- comments about shape, appearance, or size- is a way to lash out at someone who is frustrating you. That means those words and that way of using them are deeply rooted in our culture. An additional truth is that when we, as a congregation, attempted to console and listen to those who h

Faith, Grace, and Hope

Search This Blog