Halfway there! Now is another good time to stop and think about how we are doing this Lenten season.
I feel like I'm doing okay, except that I still just do not pray enough. And that's crucially important. And I say this because I have a feeling I may not be alone.
Consistent prayer has always been my biggest challenge. Often it is a matter of patience, or lack thereof. I'm in a hurry to get down to the business of the day. But Christ never seemed to be in a hurry. He knew where to go first as He began his day. He spent time with His Father. He let everything else in His life go, and He simply was, with God. And that time oriented and set the tone for His entire day.
Perhaps you wake up in the morning and you feel you have to rush to get to work or start on your to-do list. Or perhaps you have the opposite problem: you wake up and you just feel like you could lie in bed all day and do nothing. I would venture to guess that Christ experienced both. But He always came back to prayer. Immediately when He woke up in the morning He made Himself conscious of the Father's presence in His life and addressed Himself to the Father.
So we must do, every morning when we wake up. The question is, what's holding me back? What's holding you back?
For me I think part of it may be that I don't want to spend so many minutes in prayer, hoping to hear something earth-shattering from God, but get nothing at the end of it. I don't want to be let down. What I need to realize, and perhaps it will help others to hear this, is that it is better for me to place myself in His presence for five, fifteen, thirty minutes at the beginning of the day, even if I hear nothing, than never to listen in the first place. Starting off the day by listening for God can give us a listening ear for the rest of the day as well.
That's what I hope to do for the rest of this Lent. If I can work on nothing else, I want to work on giving the first five minutes of my waking day to God the Father. And then see what happens.
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