Sunday---Prayer

WHAT A GORGEOUS SUNNY DAY! AFTER ALL THE BAD WEATHER WE'VE HAD RECENTLY.  It's hard to come inside to the computer, even late in the day.

This year,  one of the things I'm dedicating my life to is improving my prayer life.  I can tell you,  I have a long way to go. But for me,  books by wise spiritual fathers help me along tremendously.  To that end,  I've just completed Elmer Towns brilliant, edifying work Praying the Lord's Prayer for Spiritual Breakthrough. Can't tell you how helpful it is to have this amazing book.  I recommend it highly and will go back and review it often. It's so good, in fact,  that if it were the only book I ever read on prayer,  I could progress a long, long way and have plenty of insights to work with.

This week I began another book on prayer by spiritual author Peter Kreeft called Prayer for Beginners. That would be me! I love, love, love the simplicity and insight in this mighty little classic and am now carrying it around in my purse so I can ponder its wisdom at quick moments during my busy day.

Want to take a few of Kreeft's excerpts on the Jesus Prayer.  And by the way,  Kreeft calls himself a beginner in praying. I can't over-estimate the joy I find in reading this book:

"JESUS," The Shortest, Simplest and Most Powerful Prayer in the World

The Jesus Prayer consists simply in uttering the single word 'Jesus' (or Lord Jesus, or Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner) in any situation, at any time and place, either aloud or silently.

There is only one prerequisite, one presupposition:  that you are a Christian or follower of Christ.  If you have faith in Christ, hope in Christ, and love of Christ, you can pray the most powerful prayer in the world....

It is  the simplest of all prayers.  It is not one of the many 'methods', because it bypasses methods and cuts right to the heart of practicing God's presence, which is the essence of prayer, the secret of which has been given to us by God the Father.  The secret is simply God the Son, God incarnate, the Lord Jesus....

It is so simple that it is like the center point of a circle.  It is the whole circle.  It contains in itself the whole gospel.....

Like any prayer, it  'works' not by the power of some impersonal magic, but by the power of personal faith and hope and love.  It is like a sacrament in that way:  it 'works' objectively by the power of God's action, not ours...

This prayer is not a sort of Christian yoga.  It is not meditation.  Its purpose is not to transform our consciousness and make us mystics or to bring inner peace, or to center on our on hearts...

For all these things are subjective, inside the human soul; but this prayer is dialogue, relationship, reaching out to another person, to Jesus, God made man, invoking him as yous savior, lover, lord and God....

In this prayer our attention is not directed inward, into our own consciousness, but only out onto Jesus....he is not self but other; he is Lord of the self.

Yet, although our intention in this prayer is not to transform our consciousness, this prayer does transform our consciousness.  How? It unifies it.  Out usual consciousness is like an unruly, stormy sea, or like a flock of chattering monkeys, or a cage of butterflies, or a hundred little bouncing balls of mercury spilled from a fever thermometer.  We cannot gather it together.  Only God can, for God is the Logos....gathering into one.  This unification  happens in us (slowly and subtly and sweetly) only when we forget ourselves in him.  This is one of the ways 'he who loses his self shall find it.'

Will continue on this next week.