I have tried to be a pray-er of The Hours, a walking pray-er, lunchtime pray-er, last thing before going to sleep pray-er, light a candle first pray-er, Psalm pray-er.... You name it, I've tried it. It works for awhile, and then I always seem to find myself losing my discipline--my lunchtime prayer time gets moved back because an appointment runs long or my walking prayer time loses out to a few more minutes in a warm bed...

But in the last few months, I've been reading the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Pastor Bonhoeffer has invited me into a spiritual discipline that no longer even feels like a discipline; it feels like pure blessing.

Listen to these words from Bonhoeffer's Life Together: "Prayer offered in early morning is decisive for the day. The wasted time we are ashamed of, the temptations we succumb to, the weakness and discouragement in our work, the disorder and lack of discipline in our thinking and in our dealings with other people--all these very frequently have their cause in our neglect of morning prayer. The ordering and scheduling of our time will become more secure when it comes from prayer. The temptations of the working day will be overcome by this breakthrough to God. The decisions that are demanded by our work will become simpler and easier when they are made not in fear of other people, but solely before the face of God."

It's that simple: morning prayer. Morning prayer every morning before I start the "business" of the day. Sometimes it happens after breakfast, after I drop Aidan off at school, or even after my drive in to the church. But it happens before I have a first meeting, phone call, errand or anything else that constitutes the business of my day.

After prayer, the rest of my day flows just as Bonhoeffer says it will: with less wasted time, with fewer temptations succumbed to, with more encouragement and less discouragement in my work, with better order and clearer thinking, with decisions made more simply, and with way fewer of my buttons being pushed (those last few words are my words, not Bonhoeffer's).

Bonhoeffer explains the beauty and blessing granted in morning prayer when he writes: "Therefore, in the early morning hours of the day may our many thoughts and our many idle words be silent, and may the first thought and the first word belong to the one to whom our whole life belongs."

You might be thinking that morning prayer sounds like a great idea, and you'd try it if you weren't already getting up at 5:00 every morning or if you didn't have to drive the carpool or you had someone to do it with or...

Someone reminded me this week that Arlen Price once said: "Where the heart is willing, it will find a thousand ways. Where it is unwilling, it will find a thousand excuses."

May you find a thousand ways to give your day to God.

Love and Blessings,

Rev. Karen Thompson

Senior Pastor                                                                     

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