Reflection

Week seven of "Seven" is officially over.

For some reason, out of all the weeks, the week of prayer and Sabbath seemed to be one of the most difficult for me.

Maybe it's because with seven commitments to pray throughout the day, including midnight and 6 am, failure seems probable.

Maybe it's because deciding to pause and breathe intentionally takes effort.

Maybe it's because adjusting one's schedule to pray is often inconvenient ("...so is being poor." Thanks, Ryan.)

Or maybe it's because regularly inviting God into one's day and week has the potential to be so life-changing that the enemy will use anything and everything to prevent it from happening.

At the beginning of the week, I was confident (with pride, not humility, unfortunately) that I would easily do all of the prayer times. I mean, how hard could it be to pause for a few minutes to pray seven times throughout the day, right?

Piece of cake.

So I set my phone with seven alarms:

Midnight: Night Prayer
6 a.m.: Morning Prayer
9 a.m.: Midmorning Prayer
Noon: Midday Prayer
3 p.m.: Midafternoon Prayer
6 p.m.: Evening Prayer
9 p.m.: Bedtime Prayer

And I woke up at midnight.

Half-asleep, I reached for my Bible and read Psalm 42, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?"

I wish I could say that this first prayer time was incredibly meaningful and that I had some sort of spiritual breakthrough.

Unfortunately, I don't remember much about it except struggling to stay awake through the passage and being relieved to turn off the light so I could roll over and go back to sleep. (I know. Shallow and very un-spiritual.)

A mere six hours later, my second alarm rang.

Six a.m.

Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world."

Amazing words.

Even now as I type them, my spirit swells considering the glory of God and his creation. I think most of that wonder was lost that morning as I stumbled through the passage.

"What is wrong with me?" I thought. This is suppose to be easy. And meaningful.

Both.

At the same time.

A friend graciously offered to let me borrow "The Liturgy of the Hours" for "Ordinary Time" (as opposed to "un-ordinary time" Confession: that thought seriously crossed my mind. Sad, but true.)

This book had prayers and scripture for each hour written and ready to go. Score! So each hour, I opened the book to the appointed prayer and read.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I did it anyways.

Noon: read and pray (and eat).

3 p.m.: read and pray.

6 p.m.: read and pray.

I developed a sort of a rhythm...a bit awkward and unrefined, but consistent. Until one night when I didn't get up for midnight prayer.

The alarm went off and I...turned it off and fell back asleep. Nice.

Then the 6 a.m. alarm went off. I did the same thing! Huge fail. It's embarrassing to type.

I got back on track with daytime prayer but realized that it was too late. I had ruined my track record. My perfect score.

Then God revealed my self-sufficiency.

And my self-satisfaction.

And self-confidence and self-admiration.

(Are you sensing a pattern?)

Since when did prayer - or any spiritual discipline for that matter - become about me? If it's not about God, then what's the point of doing it?

I decided to let go...

of keeping score.

of comparisons.

of tracking and goals of perfection.

And I embraced grace.

Sweet, generous, overwhelming grace.

And I kept praying...not to prove or win or do.

But to be.

And that is enough.