I was thinking about the phrase from the Lord's Prayer: "Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil." In this prayer we are asking God to direct us away from future temptations that would cause us to stumble into the sins that "so easily beset us" (as we would hope any good navigation program to route us around trouble on the road ahead).
Resisting Performance in Prayer
Praying for Kings
Praying without Guilt
One of the dangers of praying the Office two times a day is praying the Office two times a day in a rote kind of way. The opposite of "rote" is NOT stirring up some internal passion or by grasping a pressured focus that can produce spiritual hemorrhoids, but a pausing and waiting, refusing to do something just to do it.
Praying the Psalms
Praying with Sacramental Imagination
Beginning to Pray
Lament
Knowing vs. Doing
A Prayer for Goodness
Dead Wood
This morning's reading is from Numbers 17 where the leaders of Israel brought their walking sticks that represented their individual tribes and laid them before God. These were pieces of wood that were once alive but were now dead. God touches one of them and this dead piece of wood brimmed with life: buds, blossoms and ripe almonds (nourishment).