--Anglican Diocese of Dunedin, New Zealand.

Ash Wednesday- 1st Wednesday of Lent-
Forty Days of Prayer

When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. -- Matthew 6:6a

In his most recent Christianity Today column Philip Yancey discovers that prayer is not about "consumer requests." He talks about a spiritual retreat he took with Brennan Manning and the requirement to spend 2 hours in prayer each day. The first day he ends up watching a herd of 147 elk (he had plenty of time to count them) in which for two hours nothing happened. The elk simply did what elk do- they ate grass. All it takes to hear the sound of God's voice, he says, is to "lower the volume of the surrounding static."

He tells of a spiritual seeker who went to spend a few days in a monastery. "I hope your stay is a blessed one," said the monk who showed the visitor to his cell. "If you need anything, let us know, and we'll teach you how to live without it." [Emphasis added.]

One of the things that Yancey learned was to think more about God than about himself in prayer. "God wants us to orient our lives" around Him. One powerful comment hit me, in regard to this:

Some have called meditative prayer a useless act, because we do it not for the sake of getting something, but spontaneously, as uselessly as a child at play.

Wow! What wonderful "uselessness". Not everything in the world is about "me" and getting what "I" want. And didn't Jesus say something about being like little children in order to get into the presence of the Kingdom of God?

May Lent be a time of more uselessless with God!