is there enough time for silence?
A little while ago, I wrote a blog about the quality of prayer, and how we can be distracted during our silent prayer by a whole host of things that pop into our mind such as daily tasks and even what we are going to cook later.
This time, I want to look at something that cropped up with me today and that is the 'fitting in' of prayer time. While I do more or less stick to around half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening, I know that I can, and should, do more of this, not to 'hit targets' but to focus my life more on God.
The 'problem' that tends to arise of course, is ourselves. For example, I was more or less free of tasks from around 7pm and could have carried out silent prayer for an hour or even two if I had wished and still got done what other practical things that I needed to do. Instead, I decided to have a leisurely soak in the bath, watch a bit of TV, have some food and then watch a Belgian film. Before I knew it, it was getting late and for me anyway, it isn't a great idea to do silent prayer (or meditation if you prefer) too close to bedtime as it is easy to fall asleep.
I'm not saying that the things I did were wrong but, if I want to become closer to God, I need to try to stop simply fitting my prayer time around my other things and put my prayer time first and work other things around that. It's a simple shift but one that is very hard to do. What I need to do is to reach the tipping point where prayer comes first, rather than, all too often, second.
