Welcome to Responding with Prayer,
An opportunity to respond to the complex,
Everyday experiences that lift us up and bring us down.
My name is Jess and I've struggled with attending to prayer so I hope this little offering brings you closer to the creator.
Today's meditation is on apathy.
Let's start by taking five big breaths together.
Deep breathing has been scientifically studied and found to change how we engage stress and situations.
This is good for slowing down,
Preparing for prayer,
But also a good practice for all kinds of situations we find ourselves in.
So feel yourself breathe for just one minute.
Formed byagi.
That was 60 seconds.
If your mind went to other places,
That's okay.
It's natural and you're still here,
So let's move on.
Take a moment and identify one person or situation you were grateful for today and take a moment out loud or in your head.
Please express to God the gratitude for that person or situation.
Apathy is dangerous.
It is often built upon the ills of privilege,
Disappointment,
Hurt,
And loss.
It can be healthy for a season to slow down,
Step out of the grind,
Or put up boundaries,
But apathy is different.
It's the loss of care and compassion,
The loss of direction and mission.
Seasons of apathy happen to most of us,
But we can't stay there too long.
If you're able,
Put out your arms and turn up your palms in a posture of release towards the Creator.
Our bodies are an important part of prayer.
The Christian scriptures tell us of a very practical spiritual opportunity.
Cast your cares towards the divine.
So imagine you wrote the things that are bringing about the spiritual condition of apathy and you wrote them on the palm of your hands as an act of submission.
What words would be there?
God,
We place into your hands these things on our hands.
We give to you our apathy and its impact on our life.
A lot of meditation teaches the necessary ability to release.
Let's also focus on what healthy things we need to put into the spaces of release.
If we're releasing apathy,
What are we needing to take on?
Because you close your hands and bring your arms back to your body,
What accompanying How about renewed vision,
Passion,
Direction,
Assurance,
Hope,
Or healing?
Apathy keeps us from our purpose because it focuses on hopelessness over against the God of possibilities.
So in prayer,
We slow down and make commitments to our core foundations.
Spend a minute expressing to God how apathy is impacting your life and what freedoms you want to live into.
God,
We place into your hands these things on our hands.
God,
We accept the freedom that comes with submission to you.
We often fight against the very abundant life that you have for us.
So we accept the grace of healing,
The sacredness of work,
The good that can be done in the world.
Taking time today did not change apathy's hold or the things that draw us to it.
It may have changed your orientation towards it today.
You may need to take some greater steps to address apathy in your life,
But the great spiritual writers of the Christian tradition often maintained that prayer's greatest gift is not that it suddenly changes situations,
But that it changes us.
Amen.
You you you you you you you you
