On Lent: An Update

The sugar addiction fog has cleared a bit, praise Jesus.  Literally.  I have.  

It is amazing how we cling to things.  I have marveled at my own inability to let go.  When Paul talks about beating his flesh into submission in 1 Corinthians 9, he ain't joking.  It is insanely difficult to just give up sugar let alone the pet sins in our lives.  

I find that Lent can be a master class in letting these things go.  You get to the end of yourself and have to rely on God because there is no more of yourself to rely on.  If it was up to me I'd have that maple bar.  I'd dig deep into that creme brulee or indulge in my greatest temptation...Pepsi.  

I had a really big moment in my Lenten journey.  It might sound like I am making an excuse or being a bit of a hypocrite, and I considered that.  But something changed in me.  I was at my favorite coffee shop (seriously, the best latte I've ever had and it was without a flavored syrup) and the owner recognized me from a Google review I put online.  Without a word he came over and put a personal sized (not full slice) blackberry cheesecake in front of me.  I said, "Wow" and thanked him.  It sat there for a few minutes while I kept writing my new novel.  I looked from my laptop screen to the cheesecake and I realized that there was a complete absence of compulsion.  My mouth didn't salivate.  I didn't feel any longing or like if I pushed it away, said no thank you or something, that I would have missed out.  It was just a thing.  Just a piece of food.  And if you've seen me, I'm 291 pounds (down from 298 on Ash Wednesday, woohoo).  I'm a man who has eaten his fair share of cheese cake, cheese, and cake.  Not feeling anything was kind of a big deal.  

The man, I knew from overhearing a conversation from last time, is an artisan.  He makes 98% of the menu on site.  "Everything but the coffee beans, and we don't churn the butter," he said with a laugh.  I'm not an artisan, but I am a professionally trained cook and when I present somebody with something I've worked on, and am proud of and they refuse it hurts.  A lot.  He takes great pride in his work, and I realized (again, as much of an excuse as it sounds like) that it was about doing something to not offend.  Paul, of course, talks about this in being a Jew to the Jewish, Greek to the Greek, etc.  Was it a sin to partake during Lent?  If I was Catholic enough I might say that, but I'm not.  Grace is extreme and I wasn't violating the actual purpose of Lent in my heart.  Had it been earlier when I was really struggling I might have said something, but no.  Had I eaten the cheesecake and then felt horrible about it then maybe I would have written a different post.  And this is where the analogy of our little addictions being the same as sins breaks down.  It's instructive, illustrative in fact, but not equal to.  It was enough that during the first two weeks of Lent the Lord broke a major stronghold and after ingesting the artisan, hand crafted, blackberry cheesecake the craving was still not there.  At least not in the sanity clawing, soul shredding intensity it was before.

On the interesting but not necessarily spiritually relevant side, I have spent years suffering from acid reflux type symptoms.  For ages it did not matter if I ate acidic stuff or not, I would be popping the antacids.  At first it was kind of a "Huh...I wonder if sugar is responsible..." and then I ate the cheesecake.  The evening and all the next morning I had such acid attacks.  I am pretty certain I will not going back to sugar anymore after Lent is finished.  It will mean no diabetes, which I'm sure has been a concern of a few family and close friends.  

Pax,

W

On Lent: The Greatest Commandments

If Lent is a season in which we are called to consider "What is it mean to be a faithful disciple of Jesus" then we must consider, at some point, the Greatest Commandment.

1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.

According to Jesus, in multiple Gospels though I'm in Mark 12 for this one, the second is like it.

2. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Anyone with a Sunday School grade level can recite that from rote memory, but when it comes to understanding it...at least in my case, not so much.

How in the world is loving my neighbor in the same manner as I love myself anywhere CLOSE to loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength?  It's something that I take on Faith (with a capital F, please note, which indicates the concept is too large for me to get a grapple on at the moment) because I don't understand it.  Feel free to comment down below and help me wrestle with it.

Taking it on Faith I tackle the more manageable second one.  And I've been crap at it.  I used to suffer from a fairly significant Social Anxiety.  I wouldn't dare call it "severe" merely because I have no basis for comparison.  It wasn't Anxiety in the way I think most people feel anxiety, which is a physical response with no corresponding logic to it.  Again, I haven't studied anxiety, so if I'm incorrect feel free to correct me in the comments below.  I've always had fairly logical reasons for my anxiety, or so I've believed.

When I meet a person I always have a certain amount of awkwardness because I recognize that I'm nothing to whoever I meet.  I'm a face without a name until I'm introduced, and who the heck am I to assume anything let alone that I have a right to their time let alone their consideration?  Sometimes I feel the same way about my blogs, but I figure you can just close them if you don't want them and be on your merry way.  I tend to feel that I don't even have a right to introduce myself to someone, and when others have introduced me I have felt like that was some sort of an imposition.  But, usually once a conversation begins even then I'm at a loss.  I'm not a very small talk type person.  I've never been able to pull off the "Oh...so, uh...are you originally from here?" type conversation.  It's awkward, I sound awkward, and it feels like I'm really not interested, struggling for something so the other person who started talking to me doesn't feel rejected.  And it sounds like that because I really feel that way.  If I could skip the awkward "getting to know you" bit and launch into the in depth struggling with our human and spiritual selves philosophical sort of conversation I would.  That's the territory I feel the most at home in.  But this, "Oh gee...that Nor'easter we got the other day...what did ya think of that?" is painful.  Then you search around trying to find something in common and people always go to Sports.  I know why they go to sports...but I am not a sports guy.  Even in my favorite sport of Soccer I don't much like talking about it.  And that's why I wear Fandom shirts.

Fandom shirts (currently wearing my Doctor Who shirt with the glow-in-the-dark Weeping Angels) let me bypass all of that...generally.  One of the Small Group studies I went to I spent 8 agonizing weeks going wearing a different shirt and got no bites.  It was a couples thing with the guys but me were all swollen armed "Guys Guys", talking manliness, outdoors, trucks, and the like.  I wore Doctor Who shirts, Sherlock shirts, video game shirts, and in a last ditch (and perennially futile effort) I wore an Edgar Allen Poe shirt with a quote from "The Murders of the Rue Morgue" and one of the ladies there said the quote sounded romantic.

I'm just not a "reacher-out-er".  I figure that if we are meant to be friends then it's going to happen, and even THEN I have anxiety.  My past is a long history of thinking that each friendship is actually more important to the other person than it actually ends up being.  And that hurts.  I was friends for two years with someone and our wives were good friends.  It's such a trite story where the friend holds a party...I didn't get an invite...then one of the other friends casually remarks that "Yeah, it was a great party.  All his friends were there." and I realize that I've been just an acquaintance all this time and I thought I was a friend.  It has happened in more instances than I can actually count on my hands, fingers and toes.  And it hurts.  It hurts a lot.  It doesn't just cut, it shreds.  That shredding makes a person more than a little gun shy when it comes to forging friendships and putting yourself out there.  I've been fortunate to have one person in my life who is such a good friend that when we meet up it's like we never parted (even when it was ten years apart) or I would give up on the whole "having friends thing".

All that to say that I have anxiety because I've been damaged, not some chemical imbalance...which would be far worse I agree.

And, all that to get back to what I realized about our second greatest commandment.

"Oh well...get out there anyway."

Satori is a Zen concept that indicates a sudden realization that feels like getting smacked upside the head with a brick spiritually.  I had that.

Loving your neighbor is about loving whoever happens to be next to you at the time.  Loving him/her as yourself means treating them precisely how you would want to be treated.  For me, that means getting over my anxiety so that I can welcome them into my life as warmly and completely as I would actually want to be on the receiving end of.  I need to be treating whoever I meet with precisely the same love and care as my one completely steadfast friend did when they met me.  Yes, I've been hurt.  Yes, I have anxiety to deal with.  However, I'm in danger of turning into exactly what hurt me.  If I hold my hurt I'll make it awkward for others, I'll love at a distance, I'll not invite someone, etc.  The only way to not become what hurt me to someone else is to let go, rely on Jesus to do what He has commanded, and love with His love.  It's scary, but I'm pretty sure He can accomplish it in me when He has already commanded it of me.

It may seem a little thing now that I've pushed it outside of myself for you to see, but I'm a bit bigger on the inside for the realization.

Pax,

W

On Lent : Plucking out an eye...

I remember the first time I heard someone explain the very colorful passage where Jesus declares that if your eye offends/causes you to sin then gouge it out (Matt 5:29 and then again in Matt 18:9.  My father had a friend from work over to dinner and he knew we were Christians.  The man was "Christ Curious" and asked my dad what the passage meant.  Was Jesus serious?  If so, my dad's friend related, he'd be a blind, mute, paraplegic before the week was through.   I laughed heartily, but it stuck with me.  It is such a vivid image.  My father went on to explain it was, naturally, Jesus being hyperbolic to establish how seriously God takes sin and, by extension, how seriously we should treat sin.

This Saturday (Hurrah for Saturday Evening church) our Pastor's homily/sermon (Is it "homily" in Presbyterian circles?  I know it can be for Catholics...bah...) was on the basics of what Lent is all about.  He said, "Lent forces us to ask the question, 'What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?'".  The text was from Mark 8 where Jesus declares his own impending death.  Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him for saying he's going to die.  (Seriously...Peter rebuking Jesus...whew...) Jesus turns around and rebukes Peter by calling him Satan.  Seriously.  He calls him Satan.  And then he makes a statement that, because of the multi-millenia distance, sounds innocuous to us.

"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

Let that sink in.  Let that REALLY sink in.  Forget that we wear crosses as jewelry.  Forget every time you've seen them in the sanctuary of your local church.  Forget that you know the end of each gospel.  What is a cross?  What was a cross to them?

It was a horribly unclean implement of torture used upon criminals originated in its use by an oppressive gentile regime.

Pick up my cross?  Really Jesus?  What the heck are you talking about?  I'm not condemned to die.  I'm not an unclean law breaker.  Did you eat some bad Matzo or something?  You're talking crazy, dude.  Maybe you should take a nap and we'll clarify that later.  Let's get you out of the sun there, Mister Messiah, OK?

If they could see us from then to now and saw the representation of the cross in our churches, around our necks, tattooed on our arms, on our Bibles, as decals on our vehicles, I'm fairly certain they would throw up in their mouths a little.  It was that repulsive to them.  We're talking on the order of when Jesus declared that if they wanted to be saved then they needed to eat his flesh and drink his blood.  It cost him a lot of disciples.

This was, of course, Jesus speaking outside of time already knowing what was to come.  But what is the cross we are called to carry?

It is not the things we give up for Lent.  As difficult as that is, and the sugar cravings are pretty darn bad over here, it is not our "cross".  Difficulties, disease, pain, problematic relationships, etc...I don't think that these are "the cross we have to bear".  Sure, they are less than pleasant to go through, but I think there is a bigger meaning here.

I like how The Voice puts it, "If any of you wants to follow Me, you will have to give yourself up to God's plan..."

HIS plan no matter what it is, the cost, or what might happen as a result.  Can you trust God's plan to death?  I find it to be pretty easy to say, "Yes.  In a renounce Jesus or die situation I would choose death."  It is harder when you add torture to the mix.  If you add public humiliation and shaming to it then I'm even less likely to be OK with the divine plan.  How about working for no visible result and still putting in the time day after day?  I often ask people, "What if God's "great and mighty" plan for you is to be a janitor?  Or a stay at home parent?  What if it's to work your 9-5 with no recognition?  Would you deny yourself and give your all for His will?"  I'm always surprised how many people discount that possibility.  They brush it aside with some personal assurance that whatever God has for them is FAR more glorious than something so petty or humble...forgetting, of course, that the least will be greatest and the last first in Jesus' upside down rule that declares us all to be servants and subservient to one another.

A cross, at least in my eyes, matches Jesus' path.  "I really would rather not have to suffer living through to this plan you have set before me...but, nevertheless, Your will be done."

The things we give up for Lent, I'm realizing, has more to do with the eye-gouging.  What I give up offends me, is bad for me, is going to ultimately kill me or my relationship to God.  I'm startlingly aware of why Jesus refers to these things in our life that offend as "body parts".  We love them like they are.  We take our sins or other negative behaviors and we clutch them to our chest, both disgusted by them yet very unwilling to give them up.  I'm shocked at how much giving up something as simple and relatively innocent as sugar is quite like losing a limb.  It becomes something of a metaphor for my "innocent" sins.  Jesus is calling saying, "Cut it off.  It's bad for you.  Trust me.  Pluck it out.  You don't need it.  It can only weigh you down.  Make the clean break."  Usually I find myself begging, "I only just want to keep it a little longer.  Just a LITTLE bit longer.  The littlest bit.  Come on.  Please?"  It's a self serving lie, of course.  He does know best.

I say to myself more than anyone else, "Let go.  Give it up.  Trust Him.  The Father knows best."

Pax,

W

Ash Wednesday

My family has recently begun attending the local Presbyterian "Mega Church" as I call it.  (Seriously, it's the biggest Presbyterian church I've ever seen.  It doesn't seat thousands but it does have three services).  The church we had been attending decided to move twenty minutes away so we'd been churchless for a while.  The Presbyterian church is where we've sent our kids to AWANA so we had a pretty good feel of the people or at least the place so social anxiety was minimal.  I had some other qualifications I felt I needed in a church (I can't remember if I've written about that.  I'll have to look.  That was an...interesting...process...) and the Presby satisfied them all.  We started attending the Saturday evening service which, let me tell you, is a great thing for a church to have.

Anyway, the point is that, as my wife states, Presby is kind of like Catholic light...all the ritual without the Latin, the guilt, and they let the leaders be married.  I'm not sure that's an official description, but suffice to say they celebrate things like Ash Wednesday.

I'd never been to an Ash Wednesday service before given that I had the typical FEC sensibilities of "It ain't in the Bible, so we ain't doin' it".  Maybe it's my age creeping up on me and sentimentality creeping in, but I felt like I really wanted to go and experience it.  I'd done Lent before and was committed to doing it again this year by giving up sugar.  Well, sugar in overt forms.  I know bread has some sugar in it as do fruits but I'm not giving them up.  The sugar in my coffee, cookies, candy, soda, etc. however are verboten.  It's the indulgences I'm limiting.  (Day two is going on right now for me and...the withdrawals are pretty bad right now.  My body is less than happy with me.)

There was a soup and bread meal before the service that we also attended in order that we might get to know the congregation a little better.  I say "might" because I'm a little strange when it comes to meeting people.  My wife is the more daring one when it comes to conversation.  I'm always busy thinking, double thinking, and triple thinking what I'm going to say, how it will be received, how they might respond, and by the time that process is over I start wondering if the length of time I've spent thinking it through has been too long so as to make it not just awkward but super awkward.  It's a vicious cycle.

The time came and we all filed into the sizeable sanctuary which filled up very quickly.  That was probably my first shock.  At all the churches I've been a part of before it was hit or miss that even a quarter of the congregation showed up for an event that wasn't on Sunday morning.

My nine year old daughter nudged me a bit and asked me where the ashes were and if they actually were the burned palm branches from last palm Sunday.  My little nerdling had researched it before we left the house.  I replied that I didn't know and that wasn't necessarily a for sure thing.  She then asked what it was all about.  Apparently the things she retained from her research were more along the lines of interesting trivia.
I explained about ashes as a symbol of mourning and how we come to Lent as a recognition of our sins; that our sins have offended God, that we are from dust and to dust we will return.

She asked if she had to get that stuff on her forehead if she went up and I assured her that it's only for the will, completely voluntary.  My daughter gave a confession of faith in Jesus last year and still hadn't even gone forward for her first communion so I didn't expect that she would even entertain the idea

One of the things people in FEC circles get hung up on connected to Ash Wednesday and, by extension, Lent is the focus on the "sin" component.  I was struck by this when my sister had called me earlier in the day to relate her experience attending the event at a Catholic church.  The priest apparently went on about our sin, how sinful we are, how it offends God, and so on until she had to leave.  Naturally my Smart Ass (tm) reply was, "Did you check the denomination before you went through the door" and she said yes, of course but...what about Grace?  Naturally my brain kicked into overdrive and started obsessing on the differences.  I came to a few conclusions and notions.

It was best said by the pastor at the Presby service that night.  He said that we cannot understand the full value of that grace until we understand the depths of our depravity and the offensiveness of our sin.

Jesus' sacrifice has little value to those who don't think they did much of anything wrong in the first place.  Amazing Grace is only such a sweet song when we realize we are a wretch.  I look reflect and find that I can easily live my life thinking that my sins are minor things because I'm keeping the Big Ten with little to no problem.  I'm really not bowing down at idols, disrespecting my parents in word or deed, haven't come close to murdering, and I can't even remember the last time I coveted my neighbor's donkey.  But God says my heart is corrupt and full of deceit.  I sin.  I sin all the time.  Not a day goes by that I do not sin.  It's a modern numbing that tells me "Oh, well, ya know He's going to forgive you so shrug it off and don't give it a second thought."  Just because I know that the Judge with find me innocent doesn't mean that I should feel nothing when finding that I've committed a crime.  Should I feel condemned?  No.  However, should I feel nothing?  Sin is a cancer and there's not a cancer patient in this world that hears the diagnosis and goes, "Oh, sure.  Ok, Doc.  Thanks," with a casual air like I can tend to do with my sins.

After an invocation prayer they had someone play and sing Phil Wickham's song Mercy and I nearly wept in my pew.  We forget that we need mercy.  It's so easy to fall prey to Behavioral Christianity that believes Grace covers everything so don't think on it or let it prick your conscience.  We become quite happily numb to our wretchedness.  I'm not at all saying that we should consider, as I was told as a child, that every sin we commit is another thorn in the brow or a twist of the nail in Jesus' hand.  But it does us well to remember on occasion lest we become like the Ungrateful Servant.

Ash Wednesday is a reminder that our sins have offended God.  Lent is all about giving up our little idols, our comforts, and mourning that we tend to lavish them with more adoration and attention than we do the Jesus who saved us.  In the end we are our own idols, as it turns out.  The things we give up seem to make room for us to hold on to more of the LORD.

I had prepped for the occasion.  I wasn't about to be caught off guard again by the Non-FEC style communion where they actually say things to you. "This is the body of Christ broken for you." "Uh....thank you?" (Direct quote from our first visit).  I wondered if they would go with the oh so Catholic, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." or the slightly more modernly palatable, "Repent and believe the gospel."

The pastor looked into my eyes and said, "Dust you are and to dust you shall return.  Repent, believe the gospel and follow after Jesus."

For the second time that evening I nearly lost it.

I don't believe that there is a power inherent in the rituals themselves.  It would be easy to confuse the issue there.  I had always seen the rituals as empty expressions without power and meaning.  I was likely half right.  They are without power.  However I do believe that when we use them to draw nigh unto the LORD he is faithful to show up and draw night unto us.  Just going through the motions without a fully engage heart is not enough.  Believe that the ritual has any power in and of itself is not enough.  It's such a fine hair's breadth line that it can be difficult to put into language.

God showed up for me there, that is for sure, just like He has faithfully shown up in my "ritual" of praying three times a day, and reading my Bible first thing in the morning.

Something snagged my attention out of the corner of my eye.  The pastor was rising from a bent position and I wondered why since I believed that it was my wife right behind me and she's short but not that short.  A familiar bashful and half afraid face appeared belonging to my daughter as the pastor moved out of the way to put an ash cross on my wife's forehead.  I could not help but beam at my daughter.  I had wondered if she would ever take the next step in her faith walk by taking communion, and here she was participating in Ash Wednesday.  She followed me through the communion elements accidentally grabbing the crust of the loaf she was presented with and had an adorable little tug of war with the deacon who held it.  Dipping it in the cup of wine she walked faster to catch up with me and ask in a loud whisper, "Do I eat it now or do I wait 'til we're in our seats?".  I smiled and told her either was OK, but I eat it right away because it can drip on your hands.

We walked back to our seats, sang a hymn, received the Benediction, and were asked to exit in silence.

Exiting in silence was one of the strangest experiences of my life.  It was unsettling, and that was the point.  Ash Wednesday is not about rejoicing.  The rejoicing comes at the end, on Easter Sunday.  We were to feel unsettled, as if something was wrong, because something is wrong.  Sin broke the world.  Again, I like to think of it as a minor inconvenience, but sin is a terrible, horrible thing that has shattered lives, destroyed man's relationship with God and I wonder how many times I look at my sinning brother and I shrug in the same way I do with it in my life.  I couldn't help but think of my previous pastor and the Solemn Assembly he holds every year in October as an "Ash Wednesday" for another season of fasting.  I think we could stand to take sin seriously more than once a year.

Pax,

W

Prayer

Prayer and I have had a bit of a rocky relationship for quite a while.  It's a frustrating nebulous thing no one really talks about how you should go about it.  It's just something you DO.  You talk to the "man up in the sky" for a few minutes, tell him what you want and then move on with your life until you need to do it again.  Pastors use the "prayer time" seemingly to wrap up their sermon by providing a closed eye summary of bullet points.  The time when prayer has always felt the least odd or awkward for most people is when in dire need.  That's easy.  You've reached the end of yourself, everything is spinning out of control, and you have no power over outcomes, of course you toss up a prayer.

My position on prayer in the past has been one of, "Well, He knows what I need and he's either going to give it to me or he isn't" or "How in the world is multiple prayers and long hours on my knees going to help?  Honestly.  He knows my heart, is it really going to sway Him if I bow, scrap, grovel, and wail until my knees bleed and my vocal cords shred?"

When we look into the prayer lives of those in the Bible you see characters more open than others and with some, if you were to take it at face value, they don't seem to have prayed at all.  A fault of not recording every detail.  I was always oddly comforted that the disciples fell asleep while Jesus asks them to pray with him.  I know I'd be spouting all kinds of excuses.  "Look, rabbi, come on.  We just had a meal, had some wine, and it's getting late.  Never mind that we walked all day to get you that donkey and foal you wanted.  I close my eyes for two seconds and I'm gonna pass out."  They surely didn't need a devil to force them to sleep.  My personal schedule is enough to make it so that I can't close my eyes for long without sawing logs wherever I happen to be.  My sister-in-law can attest to this.  Ten minutes at her house and I'm on her couch in an unconscious state.

I've admired those of other faiths and their various "prayer" activities.  Buddhist meditation, the Muslim dedication to praying five times a day no matter the circumstances, and Kabbalist (Jewish Mystic) prayer/meditation.

It's not secret that I favor the Kabbalists in many respects.  Sure, they got a little wacky with their Books of Splendor and were really bad at picking who the Messiah is but there was a discipline born out joy that was their prayer life.  For them it was about communion with the LORD, that sure heaven was something to look forward to but a glimpse could be experienced here and now.  It was coming into his presence and singing praises right along with the angels surrounding the throne.  There was a direct experiential component there.  It was rarely about asking for things or giving a litany of ailments and discontent about our lives.  No Kabbalist would ever presume to tell the LORD how things should be, or how he needed to provide this way, or give him this kind of car now.  Although the Lord's Prayer was a Christian document the Kabbalist heart was more often than not, "Not my will be done, but YOUR will be done".

During my early years in FEC (Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity) I can't remember a single pastor, deacon, or elder who was in love with the LORD.  I grant you that perhaps they kept it 'til their personal devotional time, or maybe they were on their way to being in love with the Lord.  There were men who TRIED to love the LORD and went to pains to make it seem that way.  There were men who wrestled with the LORD sometimes in the very pulpit as they preached.  There were men who put on every appearance of being "in good with God".  There were men who clearly felt obligated to preach and pastor because of what the LORD had done.  And these men formed my notions of why to pray.  Namely, "God says do it, so you do it."  Prayer was a box to check off the list right up there with "made sure I turned off the oven".  It was a regulation.  I've had people tell me all my life that this whole "experiencing God" things is just a scam.  You do what the book says, you come on Sunday, you put money in the plate, and if you get a little thrill during "How Great Thou Art" when the people harmonize a little then that's fine, but it's NOT the Holy Spirit.  Somehow, it's MEANT to be bland all the time.

Once I entered into my thirties and wasn't so angry with those who had taught me, I started taking notice that the teachers in my life were suddenly people who had been broken.  They'd had divorces they didn't plan on, children having children out of wedlock, scandals, or even things they'd never mention but you could see the brokenness somewhere about the eyes.  They were often quiet and gentle.  When they spoke with authority it was rare but bedrock solid.  And when it came to prayer it was like a soothing breeze to a weary soul.  If you brought up Jesus then there it was, a new look in their eyes.  Like they couldn't wait to talk about Him and hoped you just stand back and say "Ok...3...2...1...GO!" and they'd tell you everything the good Lord had done for them, ever, up until 5 seconds before you asked.  It was always their prayers that stuck out to me.  You can tell when a prayer is from the heart or manufactured, tested, focused grouped, etc.  That sincere prayer is born out of brokenness and a love for Him to whom we pray.

All of that to say...(a common phrase here at the Oubliette) I've reclaimed some of the baby from the bathwater I talked about last time.

I did some research online as to different prayer times and I now am praying (as regularly as capable) three times a day.  Of course there's a bajillion opinions on what to pray when and inevitably they all disagree with each other.  I pray at 9:30am, 12:30pm, and at 7pm every day.  Traditionally it's meant to be 9am, 12pm, and 3pm (as I understand it) but life gets in the way.  They were monks who set this up and not stay at home husbands who have a child to homeschool, a house to clean, and (biggest differentiation) a wife to look after.
Over the past three to four weeks that I have been praying three times a day I've noticed that my life has taken on some fairly serious changes.  When I do pray all three times I've noticed that I am calmer, and react more in line with the "fruit of the Spirit" than when I do not.  Sin is not constantly crouching at my door like it once was.  I am thinking about the LORD more throughout my day making decisions and choices based on His word in the Bible.  Remarkably I have more of a sensation of His presence throughout the day.  That presence is something I've wanted for a very long time.  I once asked someone why it was that I only feel His presence at church.  If God is everywhere shouldn't I feel His presence everywhere?  They shrugged and said something along the lines of how if we felt Him everywhere then we wouldn't need faith.  I still disagree with that.  It's like saying we worship a God who wants to be known but doesn't want us to know Him; or a God who reaches out but doesn't want us to take hold; a God who gives us communion but wants it to be only about the bread and wine.

It's easy to look at rituals or ritualized anything and say that the power is in the act.  As Christians we know that isn't true.  The reason that I will live my Christian walk partly through "ritualized" prayer is because it creates a rhythm in my life that has me regularly orbiting my the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It has more to do with the promise that if I draw near to Him then He will draw near to me.

I confront myself regularly with the question from my youth, "Why pray to a God who already knows my needs before I as?"  Every time I respond that, "I don't know why...but the God who fashioned the universe (literally one song) out of His words, who sent His Son to die for me, this God who greatly loves these specks of dust on a blue dot in space....ASKS me to."  He shoves the fact of omnipotence, omniscience, and all the other OMNI that is integral to His being aside and wants to hear about my day, my struggles, how He can help, my joys and praises to Him, etc.

When I pick up my son in my arms at day's end and ask him how his day went, even when he's been home all day, he doesn't hesitate.  He doesn't say, "You know, Papa.  You were there with me all day."  No.  He screws up his face, puts a thoughtful finger to his chin and says, "Wehw..." (That's "well" for those who don't speak his language) and begins to tell me everything.

I thank God that every day my children reminds me of what He means when He says that we must all come to him like little children.

Pax,

Will