“And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42)
In one sense, a personal relationship with God is like any other personal relationship. What you get out of it is equal to the time you put into it. The time we put into our relationship with God is a time of prayer. Certainly we all need to take time out for our own personal life of prayer. If on some occasions I am alone in the Church at 9 am, I take it as an opportunity for private meditation.
At the same time, the fourth mark of the Church is one of “common prayer. That’s why I offer Morning Prayer during the week, and offer meditations on Holy Scripture on this blog. I want to create as many opportunities as possible for us to be in “common prayer” together.
And to round off the circle, common prayer is essential to the “apostles’ teaching.” In the first part of the recent Lenten Series, I spoke of the phrase, “Praying shapes believing.” The more time we spend talking to God, the more considerate we will be about how we should talk to God. The Book of Common Prayer reflects a long tradition of learning how to talk to God. Study the Prayer Book. Examine how we speak to God through the Prayer Book, and you will learn what we believe about God.
We Episcopalians don’t have a very “systematic” theology. Our theology is in the way that we pray. And the more we pray together, the more we will understand the apostles’ teaching, which must be discerned in fellowship, which is created in the breaking of bread, which is itself a form of prayer. These are the four marks of the Church. They are inseparable. They have always been the essential marks of Christian community. And they always shall be, essential and inseparable.
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2 comments:
One of my personal goals has been to have a consistent daily prayer life. I am so grateful that our congregation values daily prayer and healing prayer. Even if attendance is sporadic, it is vital that it is there for our needs- whether in troubled times or in times of blessing. I thank God for this availability. Could one of our next classes be on how to develop a personal prayer strategy in this hectic life we have? Gos bless you.
I dealt with how to use the Book of Common Prayer in one's daily prayer life during the Lenten Series. Go to http://tinyurl.com/LentSeries and scroll down to to "Using the Prayer Book Daily."
There are other, more refined techniques, such as Lectio Divina and Centering Prayer. At some point, I'll talk more about those.
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