“God always wins.” - spoken by Harriet Hayes (played by Sarah Paulson) tonight on S60. K had a great post tonight about Word and Sacrament. Luther believed in the earthly elements with sacraments – I believe in that too...but I really do believe in faith and grace and the spiritual element of life.
My prayer life has taken a beating over the years – going to seminary really hurt my spiritual life at times – see here for one example. It's amazing the things that will change that – a friend in the hospital, a change in life patterns, a big test...etc.
How do you learn, or relearn, to pray? Is there a trick to it? Sometimes I wonder if there is a better way of doing it than the way I do. In writing you're taught to have a beginning, middle, and end. My prayers tend to be sporadic and scattered (read: scatterbrained, kind of like this post). Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my faith because I don't know how to pray, which of course scares me and I should pray about it but I don't want to pray about that the wrong way and not have it work. Does that make sense?
What's funny about that above paragraph is that I'm an OT major – is there a trick to praying? Hell, no. People scream, people cry, people dance, people sing – whatever they do, they are praying. Right? So if I talk to God while I run, or while I'm typing this blog about praying or whatever, I'm praying.
I don't know. Sometimes I worry about this. I hope God still loves me even though I don't know how to pray.
3 comments:
I know exactly what you mean! I often think I'm the only skitty pray-er. And my prayers never sound like the beautiful, well-thought-out ones I hear. They seem more like begging or someone with ADHD hopped up on caffeine. I, too, hope that that's OK.
I think I read somewhere that when you can't pray is when you Need to pray the most. Are you perhaps in a dark part of the night at the moment, being sick and all?
I said my very first prayer out loud at church last month when Kari was heading off to Norway. Skipped church this Sunday so I didn't have to do the prayer again for Arthur heading to Russia.
Prayer probably shouldn't be frightening, but apparently it is.
Let me know how you get over it and I'll see if I can do the same.
Victoria
I know what you mean, I think. I abuse my friendship with God all the time. I treat him like some of my closest friends that I sometime lose contact with. But, when I do contact him or them we pick up right where we left off. Does that make sense? I believe that God is a very busy man and he needs a break from my wining and wishes. He understands when I leave him for awhile. When I do call on him he is always there for me. He fills me with the warmth of a mother hugging a child. I hope this rambling helps you. I love you and so does God. Anyway.
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