A Moment Aside for February 4, 2021

 A Moment Aside --- 4 February 2021

                                                                  

    Have you ever fallen asleep while praying? Not just your night prayers, the ones you pray just before you lay down to sleep, but falling asleep while praying. As one who preaches, I’m only bothered when someone sleeping through the sermon begins to snore. (I asked a rabbi I was aquainted with how large his congregation was; He replied “Well, the synagogue sleeps two hundred…”)

     I know we might feel guilty about losing our place during a time of prayer and we might upbraid ourselves for a lack of attention. We might even remember Jesus’ disappointment with Peter, James, and John when they couldn’t stay awake while he prayed before he was arrested. Still, we might wonder if our dropping off to sleep bothers God?

      The words on our photo carry the message that falling asleep while in prayer can be favourably compared to a baby falling asleep on a parent’s lap. The trust and familiarity that sleep implies is obvious and it may be something that many of us have experienced. For us to fall asleep on the lap of God (as it were) carries that same trust and closeness.

     We might define prayer as many writers do, that is, to include what some call the Four Aspects of Prayer or the ACTS method of praying: 

·         Adoration: Give God praise and honor for who he is as Lord over all.

• Confession: Honestly deal with the sin in your prayer life.
• Thanksgiving: Verbalize what you’re grateful for in your life and in the world around you.
• Supplication: Pray for the needs of others and yourself.

     This falls short for me because it doesn’t include the prayer of presence or of awareness. It’s “just” being with God. Its simple but hard to maintain. One of the best books on this – a tiny one, too – is “The Practice of the Presence of God” by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. I recommend it to those interested.

     Still here is a psalm that carries the message for today: Psalm 131

¹ O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
    my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
    too great and too marvelous for me.
² But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
    like a weaned child with its mother;
    my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

³ O Israel, hope in the Lord
    from this time on and forevermore.