You haven’t heard from me for a while, but I am alive, well, and improving in all aspects of life. Give thanks to God! I have even been writing—about four or five hours a day since the beginning of the year. The result of that labor of love is a book entitled Why I Don’t Pray: [Subtitle TBD]. Now that it is in the capable hands of my editor, I can turn my attention to blogging.
What spurred me on this week was the request to share with my congregation “a prayer practice.” Yes, indeed, one who ’fesses up to not praying is going to tell you all about how to pray—NOT! But humor aside, when I do maintain a habit of prayer, it tends to follow a pattern. And in the next three blog posts I will share that pattern with you.
MY BEDTIME RITUAL
Most nights, I pray while preparing for sleep. In the quiet and calm repetition of washing face and brushing teeth, I begin a five-part practice called examen. This concept was designed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, as a nightly exercise to reflect on the day’s experiences and to discover God’s activity in retrospect. I’ve created an acrostic that helps me remember the steps to this process of examen:
T—Thanks
O—Openness
D—Day’s Events
A—Admit
Y—Yearn
Thanks
The Psalmist exhorts us to
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name.”
—Psalm 100:4
I start out with general thanks, because, well, I’m alive and grateful for every single day God has given me. But as I focus upon gratitude, I get more specific about the day’s blessings, and give thanks and glory to God for them all.
Open
Open my eyes, so that I may behold
wondrous things out of your law!” (Psalm 119:18)
This is simply a prayer for the Light of the World to give me sight and insight, so that I might see God and welcome his wisdom during this prayer time. If there is any resistance in my spirit—stress, upset, frustration—I am praying that God’s sovereignty and goodness would overcome my protests and get me in a good place to hear what he has to say.
Day’s Events
This step includes two interwoven activities: the first is a review of the day (through God’s eyes) and the second is seeking conviction regarding my own behavior. The “God Hunt” is on as I try to identify those moments and happenings that had God’s fingerprint all over them—the unusual “coincidences” or the showers of goodness or some other occasion for giving God the credit. It’s the time to celebrate what went well. With this review also comes an awareness of my own shortcomings, vulnerabilities, and actual errors. The Psalmist welcomed the scrutiny:
‘Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Ps. 139:23f)
Admit.
As the Spirit of God impresses upon me the errors I have made or the sins I have committed during the day, the Spirit simultaneously offers me the power to admit them and repent and receive Jesus’s forgiveness. The sweetness to God’s mercy is hard to describe, but trust me, God has a way of speaking both truth and grace into my heart. This “admission” step is completed as I express my intention to do better in that area tomorrow.
Yearn.
Okay, I was looking for a “Y” word to complete my acrostic, and yearning comes the closest. At this point in my prayer, I express a longing for God’s will to be done, as in “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But it also includes petition for specific needs of others as well as myself—the ones I can remember since by this point my eyes are closed and the light turned off—and a prayer to gather courage for tomorrow’s challenges.
So, this is “the examen” to which I referred in my testimony at church this morning. I hope it helps you with your bedtime prayers.