questions, wednesday

Wednesday, May 27

Opening Prayer: O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in trust shall be our strength: by the power of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer)

Scripture: Mark 8:27-30

Journal: Who do you say that I am?

Reflection:

 

     “Why do you weep when you pray?” Moshe asked me, as though he had known me a long time.

     “I don’t know why,” I answered, greatly disturbed.

      The question had never entered my head.  I wept because—because of something inside me that felt the need for tears.  That was all I knew.

     “Why do you pray?” he asked me, after a moment.

     Why did I pray?  A strange question.  Why did I live?  Why did I breathe?

     “I don’t know why,” I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease.  “I don’t know why.”

     After that day I saw him often.  He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer.

     “Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him,” he was fond of repeating.  “That is the true dialogue.  Man questions God and God answers.  But we don’t understand His answers.  We can’t understand them.  Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death.  You will find the true answers Eliezer, only within yourself!”

     “And why do you pray, Moshe?” I asked him.

     “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.” (Night by Ellie Wiesel)

Prayers

Closing Prayer: Lord I so want to make all of me ready and attentive and available to you.  Please help me to clarify and purify my intentions.  I have so many contradictory desires.  I get preoccupied with things that don’t really matter or last.

     I know that if I give you my heart whatever I do will follow my new heart.  In all that I am today, all that I try to do, all my encounters, reflections, even the frustrations and failings and especially in this time of prayer, in all of this, may I place my life in your hands.  Lord I am yours, make of me what you will. ~Ignatius of Loyola