In today’s Daily Devotions for Lent, we’re talking universal prayer. Monks do it, lay do it, even some harried mommas do it, let’s do it, let’s pray Vespers. And yes, that was typed out to a certain tune, Let’s Fall in Love, lol! And that’s exactly what we want. We want to fall deeper in love with God, our brothers and sisters in Christ and the very act of prayer itself.
Photo credit: My dad
In my intention to love more and to grow in closer friendship with God this Lent, I need to constantly be aware of His presence in my life. That unfortunately can be a very fluid and vague intention. Life is busy and I’m sorry but God is not the squeaky wheel standing at our feet in the kitchen wanting a drink…or the persistent child wanting one more bedtime story…or the empty milk shelf…yet again. He’s a little harder to see and hear. So if my intention to love Him better, I need to spend more intentional time with Him. Morning prayer is an obvious. We also pray family rosary at night before bed and that my friends is a whole story of giving up the “ideal” looking orayer and settling for the good! But what about the in between times of my day?
You know that crazy hour when children are finishing up school or homework and getting ready for sports and the husband is walking in the door and everyone is hungry? Yea, you what I’m talking about. What if there was a way to spend intentional time with God in the midst of that crazy hour? What if there was some way to not only spend time with God but be united to the Universal Church at that exact same time? All the harried mommas and peaceful looking monks praying together right where they are? Sounds heavenly!
Let’s pray Vespers. Praying Vespers can unite us to God the Father and all our brothers and sisters in Christ. Vespers is the Universal Church’s call to evening prayer.
I have this lovely little book of Psalms arranged according to the Liturgy of the Hours also called the Divine Office, My Daily Psalm Book: The Perfect Prayer Book. I may not be able to sneak off somewhere quiet and I surely cannot pray an entire office, but I can open my little Psalm book and pull out a line of scripture to meditate on while cooking dinner, finding soccer cleats and driving a million kids (or so it seems) a million different directions (or so it seems.)
See mommas, too often we make the perfect, the enemy of the good. Let’s settle for the good rather than enemy which is nothing.
Debbi says
I love that picture of you, right? When/where was it taken? What was the occasion? I love photos of my mommy friends in their “younger” days!!!
Jenny says
Oh how sweet! But nope, not me. It’s a picture my dad took while he lived in Germany.