Friday, Third Week of Lent

FRIDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT

Prayer Renews

I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily, he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon. Hosea 14:5

Deep silence leads us to suspect that, in the first place, prayer is acceptance. A person who prays is one who stands with his hands open in the world. He knows that God will show himself in the nature which surrounds him, in the people he meets, in the situations he runs into. He trusts that the world holds God’s secret within it, and he expects that secret to be shown to him. Prayer creates that openness where God can give himself to man. Indeed, God wants to give himself; he wants to surrender himself to the man he has created, he even begs to be admitted into the human heart. The openness, however, does not simply come of itself. It requires our confession that we are limited, dependent, weak and even sinful. Whenever you pray, you profess that you are not God and that you wouldn’t want to be, that you haven’t reached your goal yet, and that you never will reach it in this life, that you must constantly stretch out your hands and wait again for the gift which gives new life.

The next time I pray the Our Father, I will renew my resolve to make more time in my life for God.

Henri J. M. Nouwen

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