Searching for Identity

"One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray," Luke 11:1a

A few weeks ago I had a discussion with a great group of people that meet together to help each other through our first year in seminary. On this particular day, we were discussing prayer: how we pray, how we ought to pray, and what helps us deepen our prayer lives.

We talked about the difficulties we each have in prayer, the things that we can do to intentionally ready ourselves to spend time in prayer and the resources we use to compliment our prayers. Maybe the most striking thing to me was our discussion on how we pray when we don't know what to say: whether it be hurting, stressed, fatigued, confused, angry, sad, etc. We talked about the Book of Common Prayer as a resource to use in those times.

Additionally, we discussed what a blessing it is to have something to pray when we don't know how to pray that was prayed by Christ. How often do we recite the words of the Lord's Prayer without thinking about what the words mean? I know I've failed to recognize the enormous comfort of having that prayer to pray when we don't know what or how to pray.

Take some time. Focus on the words. Explore what it means to say them.