One thing I know for sure about prayer these days is that we do not know how to pray. It is only the young in Christ who think they know how to pray; the rest of us know we are just beginners. So let’s try to begin together, which is really all we can do. – Ruth Haley Barton, Sacred Rhythms, p. 63.
This is perhaps the best advice about prayer we can receive to begin an ongoing journey into prayer with God. From here and now, and at the end of our lives, we are beginners.
I feel that keenly now, but my prayer is: Lord, teach me to pray and help me remember in all humility that I will always be a beginner in prayer.
3 Comments
July 13, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Me, too! And, Amen!
July 14, 2009 at 9:45 am
You know, this past month I got so tired of all my reasons for not knowing how to pray, that I just started doing it.
July 14, 2009 at 10:16 am
So true, Brian. You know, I found the same thing in my own life. I’ve talked a lot about prayer, I’ve read a lot about prayer, and then I decided … it’s time to just pray.
Why do you think it is that we’re so tentative about prayer? Is it fear, is it anxiety, is it that we think we’re okay without God?