Category: prayer

I came across the following last night. It seems to fit in with some of the conversations I’ve had this week about the difficulties of staying focused in prayer.

Ken Kaisch, Finding God:

Look closely at the kinds of distractions that pull us off course. We are likely to find various lists of things to do, things forgotten, memories of past encounters where something was left unresolved. Let’s look at this carefully. Why do we make lists? If we look closely, we will probably find that we are trying to remember to do things so that we can get approval, either from someone else or from the critical part within ourselves. The underlying message is, “You are not good enough unless you do everything right.” How different this is from God’s message to us: “You are my beloved children [with you I am well pleased]”

The recurring theme in conversations this week has been prayer. And most conversations on prayer seem to dance around the same issues: not enough time, not enough confidence, not enough awareness of God.

We are our own worst enemies with prayer. We try so hard to find the perfect words, the perfect level of concentration, the perfect silence, only to meet with disappointment, distraction and annoyance.

So, today’s suggestion is: stop trying so hard.

Perfection is God’s business; yours is to be true. And if the truth today is that you are largely incoherent, scatterbrained and restless, then God will deal with it.

Sit with God long enough, with that degree of honesty, and one day you might learn to deal with it too.