Prayer Provides Peaceful Way

As often happens, a line from my morning prayer resource caught my attention. The line is from a prayer that says God will “direct our steps along peaceful ways.”

Part of my occupational hazard and blessing is that I think a lot about God-- who God is, what God does and doesn’t do, what effect it has to say one believes in God.

I know this much is true: God is a Presence of loving intention for the world.  God “rules the world with justice,” as the Psalmist writes, which says to me that God is the heart of justice, integrity, the right.  I can abide, rest, settle into this One in prayer, marinating my day’s activities in this dimension of God until the edges of anxiety, fear, and over-control are tenderized. 

In prayer, God can transform my day into something holy and beautiful, even if it may look the same by outward appearance.

I bear witness to the healing power of this kind of prayer.  I am healed by God.  I feel the tension in my chest give way.  I feel lighter, freer, more joyful.  I feel empowered with love, given the capacity to absorb hatred and love enemies.  My steps are directed along peaceful ways.

Not always. But fairly often.  Often enough that I am not deterred by days when prayer feels flat and seemingly ineffective.  

Who knows?  Even in those days I might be like the student who doesn’t think she’s been listening, but who has caught more than she knows.