Absence makes the heart….

You may have noticed – perhaps with relief – that I haven’t blogged for a whole week.

It was a very busy week one way and another, and I have experienced slippage.

This blog is my discipline to make me reflect on my daily morning Bible reading.  If I don’t set my self the discipline of blogging about my thoughts – then I don’t have any thoughts…

Yeah – you guessed – the oldest slip in the book.  I allowed a busy week to derail my pattern of prayer.  I think I only managed three days of morning prayer this week.  It wasn’t a total washout – but it was poor.

And guess what?  I was the poorer for it – I actually felt spiritually parched.

I have reflected on this…

I used to think that there were two basic prayer personalities:

1) the person who needs a pattern of prayer – a place, a time, a ritual, a “habit” in the best sense of the word.
2) the person who is a freeform pray-er – who just does it as and when – as if the whole of life is a prayer.

And I used to think that person 2 was somehow better than person 1 – and that I was definitely person 2.

I set aside the fact that until recently my prayer life was pretty arid and it clearly wasn’t working – and persuaded myself that I was person 2.

I think the lesson has finally sunk in!  I don’t think this IS an either/or situation.  I have discovered that in order to fuel the “pray all the time” model of prayer – I NEED a pattern of prayer.  Without the pattern of prayer I just DON’T pray all the time.  I was kidding myself.  If I have a pattern of prayer, then the pray-all-the-time just follows naturally.  If I don’t – then it doesn’t!

So – some good has come of it – at the age of 53 I have learned a lesson I probably should have been able to grasp 30 years ago!  Go me!