Lenten Reflection - Day 11, March 13

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14

Additional Reading: Luke 11:1-4;

During this Lenten journey toward Easter, or during any time in our ongoing spiritual journey, prayer is something we must come to understand more fully. Henri Nouwen, in the Lenten devotional, Show Me the Way, writes this:

Deep silence leads us to suspect that, in the first place, prayer is acceptance. A man who prays is a man standing with his hands open to the world. He knows that God will show himself in the nature that 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.

Wow - the statement, "God wants to give himself...he wants to surrender himself to the man he created," is so powerful. That really goes against the way some people view God, but is interesting to think about when you consider it was God who took the initiative in reaching out to us through His Son Jesus Christ.

For years in the Old Testament period, people lived as though God’s love, or God’s “favor,” was something to be earned. The Incarnation changed all of that. That God “became flesh” and “dwelt among us” is a cosmic statement that goes way beyond a Christmas story. It was the revelation for all time that God desires so much to be in relationship with his people that he will descend from heaven and change who he is and how he exists to be for us.

I think prayer is the first step to accepting that love relationship that God wants to give us. Like Nouwen wrote, prayer is about standing with open hands to the world, ready to see God, it is “acceptance” and “openness” to receive God. I can see a correlation between my inability to accept God's love and my paltry prayer life. And so I look at this day and say, along with those first disciples, “Lord, teach me to pray.”