Here is a series of quotes on prayer from a book I recently read. Strung together they should not do justice to the whole picture, as presented in the book, but hint of some wonderful goals to get us jump started into the peaceful rest we can experience in our prayer life. The book is The Way of the Heart by Henri J. M. Nouwen.
“To pray always – this is the real purpose of the desert life.”
I should interject here that the “desert life” refers to a life that some people of the fourth and fifth centuries sought in the Egyptian desert. Their goals were to get away from the secular influence of their society, to find solitude and to spend time in silence, in order to seek God. They are called the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
“The literal translation of the words ‘pray always’ is ‘come to rest.’ The Greek word for rest is hesychia, and hesychasm is the term which refers to the spirituality of the desert.”
“Hesychastic prayer, which leads to that rest where the soul can dwell with God, is prayer of the heart.”
“We find the best formulation of the prayer of the heart in the words of the Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse: ‘To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seeing, within you.’”
“There are three characteristics of the prayer of the heart that can help us formulate this discipline:
- The prayer of the heart is nurtured by short, simple prayers.
- The prayer of the heart is unceasing.
- The prayer of the heart is all-inclusive.
There is so much good stuff on each of those characteristics in the book. Okay, I’m going to include one more section, it’s an entire paragraph, but I think it’s worth it.
“When we say to people, ‘I will pray for you,’ we make a very important commitment. The sad thing is that this remark often remains nothing but a well-meant expression of concern. But when we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and touched by him in the center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate. It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed by God into his own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness, and misery, not because of some great psychological or emotional capacity, but because God’s heart has become one with ours.”
That was the explanation for the “all-inclusive” characteristic of prayer of the heart. It’s weird how I can almost feel a great hollowness in my body when I read and think about this!
I hope that these words of this wise man help you to find rest in God where you can cast all your anxiety upon him, for he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7).
One comment
This is awesome ! I actually heard a message one time that pulled apart the commandment of not taking the Lord’s name in vain. In the message, and it was years ago that I heard it, the speaker brought up a good point that when we tell people we will pray for them, and you really know you probably wont, or say it because it is the thing to say, it is actually a form of taking the Lord’s name in vain.There was so much more to the reason why he spoke on this but I cant remember. I really took that to heart. That is why Im always so blessed when a person, instead of saying they will pray, just stops you right there and prays for you at the moment you are telling them the problem.