Praying
the Way Jesus Prayed
It was amazing to me…amazing that I had heard a hundred times over
the Psalmist’s saying, “Seven times a day do I praise Thee,” and
never bothered to ask what he was talking about; amazing that even though
I knew Jews prayed at set times each days and that Muslims are likewise
called to their prayers at five set times a day, I had never wondered where
the discipline came from and whether or not it was also part of my own
heritage which had somehow got misplaced along the way; amazing that the
prayers I was offering were the same ones being offered by thousands of
Christians in my time zone at exactly the same time I was offering them,
as if we were indeed a cloud of witnesses and a great company of believers;
amazing that the prayers I was offering were in large part the same prayers
of praise and worship that my Lord had prayed and offered; amazing that
increasingly as I prayed I could hear, as one friend of mine now says, “a
thousand’s thousand voices” joining mine across all that is
or has been or will be.
--Phyllis
Tickle
from “What Drew Me In and Kept Me Practicing Fixed-Hour Prayer”
|