[Monday's Devotional] - Prayer Together

This week I would like to share five prayers that have come to mean a lot to me. I grew up in a tradition which despised written prayers. For them, the only way to pray was to 'make it up as you went along'. Anything else, especially using other people's words, was 'vain repetition'.

So it has only been later in life that I have come to value, cherish and yes, even at times, rely on prayers that other people have written. And some of these prayers I return to again and again, precisely because their familiarity has carried them into my heart.

So this week, I encourage you not just to read these prayers. Read them first but then pause and actually pray them. Allowing the prayer to carry us into the presence of God is the difference between meaningless reciting and active connection to Christ.

So here is the first prayer: I'll explain the sentence in bold, below, but then I'll leave you to pray it. It comes from the Order for Holy Communion in Common Worship, the liturgy used by the Church of England and it is called the Prayer of Preparation

Almighty God

to whom all hearts are open

all desires known

and from whom no secrets are hidden:

cleanse the thoughts of our hearts

by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit

that we may perfectly love you,

and worthily magnify your holy name;

through Christ our Lord.

Amen

This prayer brings us into God's presence acknowledging that we cannot hide anything from God. Its central request is that we be cleansed. The phrase 'thoughts of our hearts' stopped me in my tracks the other day. Isn't it our brains that have thoughts and our hearts that have feelings? Actually I think there is great wisdom in this phrase for it is our deep motives, our inner drives, our self-protecting mechanisms that form 'the thoughts of our hearts' and it's in this inner place that healing needs to begin.

The prayer also tells us the means (i.e. the way) that we can be cleansed: by the Holy Spirit and tells us the point of it all: to love God and honour him with our lives. It's also a corporate prayer, we pray it together, not just as individuals which reminds us of another benefit to written prayers: we can pray together.

So let's pause and pray…

Sheila Bridge