A Prayer

 

A Prayer

" Dear Lord, Today I thought of the words of Vincent van Gogh: “It is true there is an ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea.” You are the sea. Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life, by your love I am sustained, and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love. . . . O Lord, sea of love and goodness, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know there is ebb and flow but the sea remains the sea. Amen." .... (Rev. Henri Nowen ) Picture Courtesy  : Bikepacking.com

A prayer life as a God-centred dialogue

What could it be to pray unceasingly ? Does it mean that we murmur words throughout day and night? Or does it mean that we cannot have any space for non-God thoughts in our mind? I had been thinking of this mystical statement from St. Paul often. Recently I ran into it again, when reading Rev. Henri Nouwen . This is it: To pray unceasingly , as St. Paul asks us to do, would be completely impossible if it meant to think constantly about God... To pray, I think does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. .... Although it is important and even indispensible for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone, prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts- beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful of joyful – can be thought in the presence of God. Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centred monologue to a God-centred dialogue.
To pray unceasingly is to lead all our thoughts out of their fearful isolation into a fearless conversation with God.