I have spent a lot of time over the years writing and talking and retreating and studying and teaching about the practice of fixed hour prayer—sometimes called the daily office or daily prayer.
Because of that, I know this much: To pray this way is to throw down the anchor of your prayer life somewhere between the mundane and the marvelous, between the daily and the divine. At some point, we have to move from talking about prayer to saying our prayers. If the marvelous that is possible in prayer is to have a chance to appear, it will most likely be because we have done the mundane.
I do not know if I will ever become a person of prayer. But I do know that there is only one way it will ever happen. People of prayer pray—every day.
This message is adapted from “Between the Daily and the Divine” written by Robert Benson in the July/August 2010 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine. Today is the 16th Sunday after Pentecost. The readings are Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Jeremiah 18:1-11 (semicontinuous); Psalm 1; Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 (semicontinuous); Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33.
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