Prayer Disciplines Part 2

During the last couple of years my prayer life has become less and less organized.  Oh, I still pray.  I often pray while driving.  If I wake up during the night, or very early, I pray.  I pray before falling asleep.  Thoughts of God constantly linger around the edges of my mind.  I may actually pray more that I did during my sporadic attempts at “discipline.”  I’ve come to think, as Frank Laubach once said:

“All thought can be conversations with thee (God).”

At any rate, I’ve decided to give up or give in to God’s grace and pray the way I am.

Just this week, I discovered a prayer discipline I never recognized in myself as I read “Creating a Life with God” by Daniel Wolpert. Along with many of the prayer exercises I learned in my Spiritual Direction course such as centering prayer, the Jesus prayer, lectio divina, the examen and journaling, he mentions creativity as prayer, saying:

“Since prayer connects us to God, creativity–as it connects us to the creative power of God–becomes a prayer practice.”

Throughout my faith life, periods of personal creativity have been times when I especially feel God’s presence and His pleasure with me.  One of the first times this happened was after a class on spiritual gifts led me to write a Vacation Bible School program for our church.  At the time, and for several years afterwards, our house would be littered with library books, craft ideas, Sunday School material and anything else I could find that related to the VBS theme for the year.  Several of the people who assisted me with preparing those programs mention them as times of special fun and meaning despite all the hard work that went into them.  It became a time of consuming passion for the project and for God while it lasted.  Since that time I have had the same experience in creating and leading workshops for my church and other Christian groups, writing talks for retreats, newsletter articles and even letters of encouragement or sympathy to friends.  I often sense God working through me to touch others in these ways, and when one project ends, my heart is restless until another presents itself.  How delightful to think of this as prayer!  And how delightful to realize that God can use me with all my restless and unruly thoughts!

This was written years ago.  For more current information of my prayer life see these posts:

Fanning the Flame #8 — Prayer Vision

Fanning the Flame #8 Continued … How should I pray?