Little Prayers, Part 1

Eating healthy and eating as few processed foods as possible is a laudable goal, but not always an easy one to achieve.  At our house we scramble to eat dinner at night because by the time Teryl gets done working and we get dinner on the table, its barely in time some nights before I head back to church for the evening.  Trying to chop, grate, blend, slice, peel, boil, fry, steam, bake, or nuke is just too time consuming.  So, one of our favorite “go to” cookbooks is Lisa Leake’s, “100 Days of Real Food:  Fast and Fabulous.”  She is all about cooking and eating as many foods as possible with the least amount of processing in them.  And her point in this book is that eating healthy and unprocessed foods doesn’t have to be time consuming and stressful.  Most of her meals can be accomplished in about 30 minutes.

I wonder if the same isn’t true sometimes in our devotional life—especially our prayer life.  Our busy schedules can sometimes put the kibosh on it and the next thing we know, we are weighed down with guilt; we don’t pray as much as we should, our prayer time is too short, we don’t seem to pray for people beyond ourselves and our families.  All we seem to get out is some little frustrated/ exasperated prayer such as, “Lord, help me!” or “Lord, have mercy!”  But don’t beat yourself up too much; don’t give up your intentions to spend more time in prayer and to pray for more people, cares, and concerns.  And keep in mind that those little prayers can be very powerful and ceaseless prayers—just as Paul encourages us to pray in I Thessalonians 5:17.

Some of my favorite daily prayers to pray are the little ones found within the various services and offices of the day found in Lutheran Service Book.  Take the little prayer of the disciples on the road to Emmaus found in Luke 24:29. Later, on the day of resurrection, two of the disciples decided to journey home from Jerusalem to Emmaus.  Along the way they were discussing all that had happened in Jerusalem that week and what the women had discovered at Jesus’ tomb that morning.  As they were talking, Jesus came upon them and joined in their discussion.  He began to open the Scriptures to them concerning all that had happened and their “hearts burned within them” (vs 32). 

They were sad to reach their destination of Emmaus.  They had begun to understand so much from Jesus, though they did not recognize him as Jesus.  They wanted to hear more, know more, grow more.  Their prayer was short, sweet, and to the point: “Stay with us, Lord, for it is evening, and the day is almost over.”  This very prayer is one of the versicles found in the Service of Light in Evening Prayer.  Jesus heard their request and honored it.  He stayed with them long enough to sit down at table and bless their evening meal.  And in so doing he opened their eyes and minds even farther and they recognized him, not just as Jesus, but as the risen Christ! 

And how fitting that the next set of versicles that follow in Evening Prayer is another little prayer: “Let your light scatter the darkness and illumine your Church” (I Cor.4:5 and 2 Cor. 4:6). In the Thanksgiving For Light, we sing these words as a little prayer:” Enlighten our darkness by the light of your Christ; may His Word be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.”  Those words come directly from Psalm 119:105.  In the Scriptures darkness is always symbolic of sin, evil, and ignorance of the things of God.  But on the other hand, light is always symbolic of the new life in Christ and the robe of his righteousness that we wear. Out of Psalm 141 in Evening Prayer one prays these three little prayers:  “Set a watch before my mouth, O Lord, and guard the door of my lips’; “Let not my heart incline to any evil thing”; “Let me not be occupied in wickedness with evildoers”.

And here are two little prayers that I like to use at the close of evening meetings and when I go to bed at night.  The Office of Compline (Prayer at the Close of the Day) begins with this invocation: “The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and peace at the last.”  And then at the end (almost) of Compline the antiphon to the Nunc Dimittis (The Song of Simeon) is sung twice: “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.”  Short, sweet, little prayers, but what better prayers could one pray at the close of the day?

Hmm.  I see a book in my future:  100 Days of Real Prayers:  Short, Sweet, & Powerful!

AE