Reflection Roundup: On Our Knees
Each week we gather news stories, notable pieces, and other important items for Christian leaders today. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but may not concur.
This week, I’m again sharing just five things as I join my high-schooler on mission and also reconnect with some best friends. Here are five prayer resources that might refresh your practice. I’ll be back to sharing 10 things soon!
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1. In my 19 years as an educator, In My Heart Room, Book One: 16 Love Prayers for Little Children by Mary Terese Donze is the best resource I’ve encountered for visiting Jesus imaginatively in prayer. It came by recommendation of Pádraig Ó Tuama, whom I mention in #5 below. As we are all children of God, instructed by Christ to observe and live such lives, this book translates to all prayer environments, is useful for groups as well as individuals, and need not be reserved for use with the very young. The local library consortium is a good place to find a copy and give it a try.
2. A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie is unique in that it contains blank pages on which to reflect and compose personal prayers alongside those contained in the book. There are 31 prayers for morning and evening, enough to last any month, yet the user need not feel compelled to move as quickly as the prayers are titled (“First Day,” “Second Day,” and following).
3. If you’re interested in a generously didactic book that instructs in all types of prayer, some of which may be new, look no further than Leaning Into God's Embrace by Jackie L. Halstead. Halstead’s warm ministry presence emanates from the words she’s written, partnering with and leading individuals and groups through the practices about which she speaks from experience.
4. The instinct for prayer is a human instinct. The outcry for help, the overwhelm of awe, and the swell of gratitude are not distinctly Christian. In The Meaning of Prayer, the reader (the pray-er) joins preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick as he incorporates his perceptions of the early-20th-century world into his prayers, finding the cry of his heart not unlike that human cry common to all times.
5. In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World by Pádraig Ó Tuama is a prayerful memoir reflecting the mindful way Ó Tuama moves through the world. It’s another example of lived, ceaseless prayer reminiscent of Brother Lawrence’s spirit in The Practice of the Presence of God, another no-miss!
