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    Short Prayers: A Month's Meditations for the Searching Soul
    Short Prayers: A Month's Meditations for the Searching Soul
    Short Prayers: A Month's Meditations for the Searching Soul
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    Short Prayers: A Month's Meditations for the Searching Soul

    By Ted Peters

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    About this ebook

    You can do a lot with a few words, especially when it comes to prayers. Prayers should be short. Somewhat humorously, we note how Jesus remarks: When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:7-8). Empty phrases packaged in many words do not impress God. God does not need to be impressed, because the divine ear is attentive to our needs before we even speak of them. Hence, those long tedious strings of eloquent verbiage we have become accustomed to hearing from the lips of our priests and pastors are, according to Jesus, superfluous. For the searching soul, short prayers will do just ne. After an introduction which makes just this point, the book follows with thirty-one five-minute chapters, each with a story to meditate on accompanied by a short prayer.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisher Ted Peters
    Release dateOct 28, 2013
    ISBN9780989067645
    Short Prayers: A Month's Meditations for the Searching Soul

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      Book preview

      Short Prayers - Ted Peters

      A LONG INTRODUCTION TO SHORT PRAYERS

      Prayers should be short. At least this is what Jesus says. When introducing what has become known as The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus remarks:

      NRS Matthew 6:7 When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

      Empty phrases packaged in many words do not impress God. God does not need to be impressed, because the divine ear is attentive to our needs before we even speak of them. Hence, those long tedious strings of eloquent verbiage we have become accustomed to hearing from the lips of our priests and pastors are, according to Jesus, superfluous.

      Jesus still thinks we should pray, however. God responds to prayer. Ask, and it shall be given you, he says in the Sermon on the Mount: Your Father who is in heaven will give good things to those who ask him (Matthew 7:7, 11b). Though prayers should be short, they are not without importance.

      A person can do a lot with a few words. In particular, short prayers can have a specific focus. When highly focused, such a prayer can orient one’s life. Oh, yes, the primary purpose of a prayer is to say something to God. Nevertheless, prayers have a secondary value, namely, they guide our own way of seeing things. Prayers are lenses through which we view our life, through which we can perceive the invisible God to be present and at work in our daily affairs. Prayer is double-talk, so to speak. When we speak to God we are simultaneously speaking to ourselves. When we talk to God, we are understanding ourselves in relation to God, and this means we are understanding our true self. Even if we are searching for an invisible and illusive God, our prayers have a way of uncovering just who we truly are.

      The Self of the Searching Soul

      Perhaps you, the reader, have a searching soul. The searching soul may from time to time ask: Just who am I? Like peeling an onion, we peel and peel until nothing is left at the center. There seems to be no there there. As we look down through the layers of what makes us a self, we find we miss something. What we miss is a bottom, a center, a foundation. No matter how deep we dig into the recesses of our consciousness, only an abyss lies beneath. Introspection seems to confirm something the Buddhists say, namely, that beneath what appears to be our self is emptiness (śūnyatā). This indicates that what we thought to be our self is, in reality, a non-self (anātman).

      The self cannot ground the self. If you fancy yourself to be a rugged individualist, this might come as a bad dream. Yet, it is undeniably the case that we are groundless, anchorless, adrift in an everyday world of physical interactions and mental interpretations. We can tell a story about ourselves, a life story that stretches from our birth to our death. But, what does it mean?

      On our laptop we can manufacture a preferred self in the digital world of secondlife.com. We can project our daydreams into a virtual network that includes the self we want to be. But this second life is even more fleeting than the first one.

      Like a bubble at a child’s birthday party, our entire life floats between the breath that a moment ago blew us into existence and our imminent bursting. We are ephemeral, evanescent, temporary. Before we were born, we did not exist. After we die, we will cease to exist. Perhaps someone two generations from now will remember us, maybe longer if our eulogy was particularly eloquent. But we ourselves will not know whether anyone will ever read what is etched on our tombstone. What we know about ourselves today is temporal and temporary, here for a short span and then, and then, and then.

      Our prayers are shorter than even our life. Our short prayers last only a short time, but they are heard by the everlasting God. What we say defines who we are—defines who we want to be. And if our eternal God grants our prayer then we gain an eternal identity. We are what we pray, so to speak. The self we are searching for turns out to be a gift that God gives us. In prayer, we become aware of this divine gift.

      In prayer we search. Then we find that we have been found. One of Augustine’s short prayers to God gives voice to the searching soul: You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.¹

      God’s Will, Not Mine

      We have a paradox at work here. Only when we surrender our self do we find that we have been given our self, our true and eternal self. Perhaps it is better to call this a miracle rather than a paradox. True religion begins with the quest for meaning and value beyond self-centeredness, writes Huston Smith. It renounces the ego’s claims to finality.²

      This grounding of the self in our eternal God is exemplified in one of the most decisive prayers in history: Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Anticipating the likely mocking, suffering, and death that was imminent, Jesus prays:

      And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless,t not what I want but what you want. (Matthew 26:39).

      After addressing God as Father, Jesus asks that he not have to drink the cup of death. Perhaps making an allusion to the cup of Socrates filled with poison hemlock that put an end to the philosopher’s life, Jesus acknowledges his own desire to avoid Socrates’ fate. Nevertheless—and nevertheless is a mighty big word in this prayer—Jesus concludes by conforming his will to God’s will. Jesus is deliberately orienting his life to God’s will. He will now take courage and take whatever befalls him. By accepting his death at this time and place, Jesus defines himself as one who is at one with God’s eternal will.

      Now many of us might feel a bit discouraged if we look at Jesus as our model for

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