Wake-up Call

PAUSE

As I enter prayer now, I pause to be still; to breathe slowly, to recenter my scattered senses upon the presence of God.

(pause)

I pray Psalm 38:9–10, repeating the words slowly, several times:

“All my longings lie open before you, Lord: my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes.”

REFLECT

Bible: From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. He said: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.” (Jon. 2:1–2)

Book passage: “Afflictions quicken us to prayer,” observed John Newton, the former slave-ship captain best known for writing the hymn ”Amazing Grace.” ”Experience testifies that a long course of ease and prosperity, without painful changes, has an unhappy tendency to make us cold and formal in our secret worship; but troubles rouse our spirits, and constrain us to call upon the Lord in good earnest, when we feel a need of that help which we only can have from him.”^*

ASK

Ask myself: Is it true that “troubles rouse our spirits” and “afflictions quicken us to prayer”?

Ask the Lord: Like Jonah crying out to God from the belly of the beast, I rouse myself again today to call out to You Lord from the darkness of my impossible predicament.

YIELD

A prayer of the eighteenth-century soldier, explorer, and monk, Charles de Foucauld:

Father, I abandon myself into Your hands; do with me what You will. Whatever You may do, I thank You: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only Your will be done in me, and in all Your creatures—I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Amen.