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10:30 am Worship

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Psalm 100: 1-2

¹ Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands; serve the Lord with gladness
and come before his presence with a song.
² Know this: The Lord himself is God; he himself has made us, and we are his;
we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.

Someone has asked me to lead a time for meditation each week. I know I should do it, but something in the idea causes me to resist. I suspect my friend believes I can somehow teach her to pray better, and I know after long years of struggling to pray that no human can teach another such a thing. One learns to pray in only one way: by praying. It’s a long and arduous process.

Henri Nouwen said it well.

“O Lord, thinking about you, being fascinated with theological ideas and discussions, being excited about histories of Christian spirituality and stimulated by thoughts and ideas about prayer and meditation, all this can be as much an expression of greed as the unruly desire for food, possessions, or power.

“Every day I see again that only you can teach me to pray…” (A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, from “A Cry for Mercy,” by Henri Nouwen, 119.)

In reality, I have often found prayer to be a dry desert, often offering no sustenance whatever. I read the advice of some ancient saint once to try to link my prayer with every breath I draw. He advocated the use of the Jesus prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I prayed this prayer for the longest time, for years, tying its thoughts to my breath.

An entire theology lies in the prayer. Lord. Jesus. Son of God. I tried to breathe Jesus in with each indrawn breath. But then I recognized the other half of the prayer. Have mercy. I am but a sinner. I attempted with each exhalation to let go of my sin. To cast it away.

Countless hours, recognizing the Lordship of God and looking at my own sin. For the very longest time, it offered no comfort, no inspiration, no safety. But over a very long time, God implanted in me an understanding. I began to understand I was loved despite my sin, that mercy was indeed available even for me. This was not the result of my conscious acts. Not the result of some lesson offered by an ancient saint. Did those things matter? Certainly.

But the conviction came from God. The answer came from God.

One can’t learn to meditate in a class. One learns only by spending time with God. Meditation doesn’t make us happy. It makes us better.

Against all these realities, I still hear and believe something Eugene Peterson once said. I can’t reconcile it with what I’ve written above, yet I believe both things are true. Peterson said a pastor had only one job: to teach people to pray.

How frustrating it is to be human. What is a human? A human is a being who has no trouble whatsoever believing two opposing ideas in the very same moment.

Hymn of the day: Make My Life a Prayer to You. Online at Rossford UMC - Media.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler