A life of Prayer, Beginning with Praise-A Reflection on Psalm 29

Do you ever find it hard to pray?  You are not alone.  Here we are, heads bowed, eyes closed, talking to one we cannot readily see and that we must train ourselves to hear.  It can seem one sided and it can feel like our prayers do not make it past the ceiling.  Brother Lawrence, a 17^th century lay brother in a Carmelite Monastery in Paris, wrote about this in The Spiritual Maxims of Brother Lawrence.”  He describes being a novice at prayer and what he did was devote all he was and did to prayer.  He describes working in the kitchen and as he worked he prayed.  He devoted his work to God and he thanked God for the work that had been completed.  If the work didn’t turn out as he had hoped he would commit that also to prayer.  Life, for Brother Lawrence, was a continual prayer. 

            We have many models of prayer in scripture.  The most famous being the Lord’s Prayer.  Jesus begins the Lord’s Prayer with praise for God.  “Our Father in Heaven Hallowed be thy name.”  Psalm 29 gives us another example of praise.  We can turn to scripture to examples of prayer as we seek to make our own lives a continuous conversation with the source of Love, our Creator, and our God.  Thanks be to God.