My reflection is from Give Us This Day:
“Many prayers we say have been passed down to us for generations…..
These prayers are venerable, a history of the unchanging human spirit. But they do not guarantee that those who say them will ever be really ‘prayerful’ people. They tell us only that people pray.
Prayerfulness, on the other hand, is the capacity to walk in touch with God through everything in life. It is the internal awareness that God is with me – now, here, in this, always. It is an awareness of the continuing presence of God. It is my dialogue with the living God who inhabits my world in Spirit and in Mind.
Prayerfulness sees God everywhere.
Prayerfulness talks to God everywhere.
Prayerfulness submits the uncertainties of the moment to the scrutiny of the internal eye of God. It trust that no matter how malevolent the situation may be, I can walk through it unharmed because God is with me.
Prayerfulness is fostered by the simple consciousness that God is. That God is near us at all times. That God is closer to us than the breath we breathe. That God is available, a silence in the midst of chaos, a voice in the midst of confusion, a promise at the center of the tumult.
If I ask and I listen and I reach out and I fill my heart with the words of the One who is the word, then I will be answered. Somehow the path will become clear.” Sr. Joan Chittister, The Breath of the Soul
God is present with us in the good times and in the bad times. We just need to reach out to God.
