Picture a stone, one that you plucked up out of the forest. It has a hard rocky surface and jagged edges, formed by thousands of years of tectonic movements and soil. You take that forest stone and drop it in the waters of a clear, moving stream. If you sit and watch your stone through the water, not much will happen. But,…

The final element of the shape of prayer I want to focus on in this series is thanksgiving. The Daily Office liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer end with the prayer of General Thanksgiving, and I want to use this prayer as a model and a picture of the kind of thankful people that these prayers are forming us into. Here’s…

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:5b-6) My prayer is that this series of Reflections has been helpful for expanding your vision for your own prayer life. The Daily Office, as a form of prayer and a model for…

In our discussion of the way that the Daily Office shapes and forms us as a people of prayer, we come now to the prayer that embodies this dynamic more clearly than anything else. The Lord’s Prayer, the beginning of the section of the Daily Office focused on our prayers and petitions, is a microcosm of this entire project—what we pray shapes…

The next element of the Daily Office, which we are working our way through so as to explore the shape of a Christian prayer life, is to recite the Apostles’ Creed. Daily, we are affirming the core truths of our faith through this creed, reminding ourselves of what it is we believe and letting it settle deep into our bones. For when…

“Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly…” (Colossians 3:16) As we continue to reflect on the shape of a Christian prayer life using the Daily Office as our guide, we are working the angles of that shape, meditating on the different aspects and priorities of prayer. I have written to you in previous weeks about being present to God as…

Following the opening sentence of Scripture and the Confession, the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer continue with The Invitatory, which, as its name suggests, invites us to lift our hearts to the Lord in praise. The call-and-response prayers using the words of Psalm 51 ask the Lord to open our lips, so that our mouth shall proclaim His praise. We…

In Morning and Evening Prayer, right after the opening sentence, which are meant to orient and attune our hearts to the presence of God (see last week’s Reflection), we come to the confession of sin. Today, I want to reflect on two questions: Why begin with confession? Perhaps you are thinking—this is kind of a downer way to start a prayer time!…

Prayer is about being present to God, and allowing God to be present to you. To explore the dynamics of a Christian prayer life, we’re going to be using the shape of daily prayer from our Book of Common Prayer (2019). The Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer begin with an opening sentence of Scripture, that act as a call to…

I want to inaugurate this Rector’s Reflections effort with a series of reflections on prayer. As I was asking the Lord about how to proceed with this, it seemed good and right to start with the fundamentals of the Christian life, which all of us need to grow more deeply into. For prayer is not something we learn in Sunday school and…