The spiritual formation practice of daily prayer and scripture is an ancient one. God has always invited us into relationship and healthy relationships require time and intention. At creation, God ordered the world we know into days and seasons and years and invited human beings to live into that rhythm grounded in a relationship with our Creator.
As with all that we hold precious and important, we have to make time daily to nurture our relationship with God. We rarely if ever, ‘find’ time. It doesn’t have to be long, 10, 20, 30 minutes, and the time of day doesn’t matter, but you do need to be intentional. Put it in your calendar. Set a reminder. Invite someone to do this with you, even if you don’t do it at the same time and place, check with each other regularly to talk about what you experienced in this time.
Don’t stress about getting it ‘right’. The only way we fail at spiritual practices is to not do them. God is more aware of our humanness that we are and God knows we won’t always ‘feel it’ and there will be days when we just go through the motions. And there will be days when you are stirred in the depths of your soul and your whole life makes a shift. And there will be every possibility in between. God loves us and is always ready for us to show up. Give yourself the same grace God does.
Daily Prayer
I invite you to do use the Daily Reading from the lectionary provided by Vanderbilt Divinity Library. It’s an easy to use online schedule. It works with the Sunday Revised Common Lectionary. The daily lessons Monday through Wednesday supplement what was read on the previous Sunday and the Thursday through Saturday lessons prepare us for the Sunday to come. The Psalms repeat for each of the three days, allowing for a good soaking in the prayerful poetry of life lived as God’s people.
Prayer Helps
Here are some prayer sheets I have designed over the years that I find helpful.
Please feel free to download the pdf and use in your own prayer practices and in your prayer groups (if you share them with others, please direct them to my website!). I print them and keep them on a small clip board at my prayer space. Figure out how they work best for you. There’s no right or wrong way to use them.
Night Prayer/Compline
Early in my time in the Episcopal Church, before I was even thinking about ordination, I was introduced to the prayer of Compline. The word Compline comes from the Latin word for ‘fill up’ and in English we say it means complete. It is a communal prayer for the end of the day.
I especially favor the version of Compline from A New Zealand Prayer Book called Night Prayer. This book is copyrighted but can be access online here for use. Please honor their copyright.
Here my adaptation from the Book of Common Prayer of the United States. The US BCP is not copyrighted and can be adapted and reprinted and distributed.
You can access Compline (under the Daily Office heading) in the BCP online here.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 