Praying What I Don’t Want To Pray

I have been finding one of the best benefits of using a prayer book is that you don’t get to decide what to pray all the time, and this greatly effects the prayers you pray when you do get to decide.

I don’t decide what the prayers will be in the Glenstal Book of Prayer, the Book of Common Prayer, or the Missio Dei Breviary.  They decide for me.  I trust them, and I pray along with them, even if it’s something I wouldn’t be praying if I chose.

This morning in the Glenstal Book of Prayer I prayed along with them to thank God for this day as every day is a gift from God.

It’s been rainy in New Jersey almost constantly now.  The last day with sun was on Sunday (ironic!), and it was cloudy and rainy all last week.  I miss the sun. And when I woke up and prayed with Sarah this morning thunder clouds were rolling in and it was going to be another day of clouds and rain (it lived up to it’s foreshadowing).  I wasn’t really feeling like another rainy day in a week full of rainy days was a gift from God.

But I don’t get to call the shots.  The benevolent Benedictine monks who wrote the prayer book do, and the wisdom of our spiritual peers supersedes time and place.  When we pray with others in set prayer, when we deny ourselves the opportunity to shape all of our spirituality, we must learn to happily succumb to self-denial.  Every day is a gift from God, and we must thank him for it, says the body of Christ, even if the little cell in the body which is me doesn’t want to.  It’s not my call.

I always interpreted the Book of Common Prayer as a collection of prayers that are generic or "common."  But more importantly, I think we should remember that by using a prayer book or praying within our own traditions and local communities we are forming common prayer, prayers the community of Christ hold in common so that no one person can branch off and form their own prayers.  We must hold fast to the self-denial we find in corporate ("common") worship, for it is in these times that we learn to deny our feelings and preferences for the greater good of the Body and to properly worship God with all our hearts!