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 this little offering brings you closer to the Creator.
Today's meditation is for those times when we can't pray.
Let's start by taking five big breaths to slow down our heart and our mind.
Deep breathing has been 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.
That was a literal 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 a moment to identify one person or situation you are grateful for as you do this.
Take a moment and out loud or in your head,
Express that gratitude towards God.
We all get to the place where words in prayer are insufficient.
This can be from pain and grief or awe and regret.
The scriptures talk about the times when we cannot speak,
The spirit will pray for us in groans and utterances.
Often our response to being stuck in prayer is to not pray.
But in this time,
Let's just let the silence speak for us.
Our bodies are important in 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 of a very practical spiritual opportunity.
Cast your cares toward the divine.
So imagine you wrote the issues that keep you from prayer on the palms 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 these concerns and their impact on our lives.
A lot of meditation teaches the necessary ability to release.
Let's also focus on what healthy things we need to put into the space of that release.
If we are releasing the concerns that keep you from prayer,
What are you needing to take on?
As you close your hands,
What accompanying assurances do you need from God to trust and engage prayer?
Knowing we are seen and heard.
It is much easier to run from God in prayer than to try to walk into the things that keep us from God.
God is waiting and is always waiting.
So we have the freedom to engage God now or come back when we need to.
Spend a minute expressing to God what freedoms you want to live in.
Or,
If you're still not ready to engage God,
Find in your awareness the hope you have in a future time of connection with the divine.
God,
We accept the freedom that comes in relationship with you.
We often fight against the very abundant life that you have for us.
Because we accept the grace of being loved even when we can't or haven't prayed.
We accept the grace of being accepted even as we sit before you feeling silent or lost.
Now taking this time today to not change the issues and things that are keeping you from prayer,
It may have changed your orientation towards them.
You may need to take some greater steps to address these things in your life.
But the great spiritual writers in the Christian tradition often maintained that prayer's greatest gift is not that it suddenly changes our situations,
But that it often changes us.
