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 have struggled with attending to prayer and hope that this little offering brings you closer to the Creator.
Today's meditation is about things that are outside of our control.
To start,
Let's take five big breaths together.
Deep breathing has been studied and found to change how we engage stress and situations.
It's good for slowing down,
Preparing for prayer,
But also a good practice for all kinds of situations we find ourselves in.
So,
Just feel yourself breathe for 60 seconds.
We'll take one minute to slow our hearts and our minds down and just breathe.
That was literally 60 seconds.
If your mind went to other places just now,
Or happens throughout this time,
That's okay.
It's natural.
You're still here,
So let's move on.
Take one moment and identify a person or situation you are grateful for as you do this.
Take a moment and,
Out loud or in your head,
Express gratitude towards God for that person or situation.
We want so much to control more than we actually do.
We want to believe that with enough worry and activity,
We can make sure that things do not go wrong for us and the people we love.
Identifying things outside of our control is challenging because we do not want to face this difficulty.
But even deeper than that,
I think even more appealing,
Is the idea that we want to believe we can keep all of the important things in our lives under our own power.
Our bodies are an important part of prayer.
So if you're able,
Put out your arms and turn your palms up in a posture of release toward the Creator.
The Christian scriptures tell us of a very practical spiritual opportunity.
Cast our cares toward the Creator.
So imagine you wrote the things that you're trying to control,
But you can't,
On the palms of your hands as an act of submission.
What words would be there?
Could we place into your hands the things on our hands?
We give to you these seriously important dynamics that we hope for and fear over.
We give to you.
Now a lot of meditation teaches the necessary ability to release,
But let's also focus on what healthy things we put into that space of release.
If we are releasing the need for control,
What are we needing to take on?
As you close your hands,
What accompanying assurances do you need as you deal with these things outside of your control?
How about faith that God is in control?
How about risk,
Insecurity?
Control you can count on or trust in yourself.
In prayer,
We slow down and make commitments to our core foundations.
Spend a minute expressing to God how this need for control is impacting your life and how freeing it would be to be able to trust.
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 that we are not actually in control.
The things that we love and care so much about are actually in your control.
We accept your grace and your love and your care for us and for all these things.
Now taking this time today to release our cares and concerns is important,
But it is spiritually essential that we change our orientation towards being in control.
And the great spiritual writers in the Christian tradition often maintained that prayer's greatest gift is not that it suddenly changes situations,
But that often it changes us.
Amen.
