We youth pastor-type folks have a reputation for saying things like, “you should pray… you should read your bible…”
Call it an occupational hazard or something. But one of the things that I try to keep in front of me all the time and one of things we try and do fairly often during our mid-week worship gathering is to learn some specific ways to pray, some specific prayer practices. Like telling a hungry and cold person to keep warm and well fed, I worry that we are doing no good to others when we tell them to pray and read Scripture but don’t offer to do that w/ them and to give them some concrete ways of putting those things into practice.
So this week at the HUB we learned a new way of praying together. It’s a version of an old prayer that was first used as part of a larger liturgy. It’s called the Sarum Primer, but I just call it the “God be in my head” prayer.
Here’s the way we prayed it together. As you say the beginning of each part, place your hands on the part of your body that you’re asking God to be in: your head, your ears, your eyes, your mouth, your heart, you get the idea. As you ask God to be in those parts of your body, what you’re doing is opening up a conversation between you and God about your thoughts, the things you’ve seen, heard, said, etc. Let God speak to you about this and you do the same to God. Take as much time as you need before moving on to the next part. Let’s Pray:
God be in my head,
and in my understanding.
God be in my eyes,
and in my seeing.
God be in my ears,
and in my hearing.
God be in my mouth,
and in my speaking.
God be in my heart,
and in my desiring.
Amen.
I hope this can be helpful to you.
