The Two Shall Become One

Today’s devotional in the Love Expressed series focuses on engage with GOD in deeper levels of prayer.  Prayer is a beautiful, as well as essential, way to ask for Our Lord’s help and blessings. Even when God doesn’t answer our prayers as we’d like, He gives us the grace to cope with our problems and tragedies better in any case.

Prayer is a beautiful, as well as essential, way to ask for Our Lord’s help and blessings. Even when GOD doesn’t answer our prayers as we’d like, He gives us the grace to cope with our problems and tragedies better in any case.

Through prayer, you can receive divine guidance, strength, and blessings from Him daily. Prayer can help you draw closer to GOD, receive comfort in troubling times, and know right from wrong.

There is no right way to pray but there are three basic ways in which we pray. 

First, there is vocal prayer.  In vocal prayers you express your love for God and through which you lift up your souls towards GOD. Therefore we must hold in high esteem this kind of prayer and practice it much. We do are also utilizing vocal prayers when we sing the praises of GOD.

The second kind of prayer is mental prayer or meditation. Mental prayer consists in lifting up our mind towards the Good Lord by meditating on GOD’s greatness, His perfections, without speaking our words aloud. You practice this kind of prayer when you submit yourselves to Him, think of Him, forgetting the worries of this world, daily worries, in order to elevate your soul towards God, you practice mental prayer.

There is a third kind of prayer which is essential, and which is the most important, beside vocal and mental prayer: the prayer of the heart.

What is the prayer of the heart? It is that which shows internally love for the Good Lord, without even a particular thought on this or that subject, such as this perfection of God, or that manifestation of the charity of God towards us. But to simply love GOD, to express our love to the Good Lord. It is somewhat like a little child in his mother's arms, like to what he has in his heart for his mommy and daddy. He is happy - he is in his father's arms or his mother's arms. He does not think of anything else. He thinks only of loving his parents. Well, we should have such a natural, profound and constant love for the Good Lord. This prayer is the most pleasing to God because it places us entirely at His disposal. By it, we offer our whole self to God. We offer our body, our will, our time and all that we are to Him Who created us, to Him who awaits us, to give us this heavenly bliss which He has prepared for us.

Ask GOD today to give you boldness to engage with Him in deeper levels of prayer. 

Placing My Worries Before GOD

Before I start writing about today’s devotional I’d like to share something with you that relates to the recent devotional about miracles.  In the activation section of that devotional I was instructed to close my eyes for a moment and think about what I am really hoping for.  I am reminded that GOD awaits my request.

Now let me begin by saying I do not look upon GOD as a genie who awaits my wishes so that he may grant them.  I do understand that our prayers should be filled with adoration and praise in which our only desire is to be in GOD's presence forever.  Sometimes though, there are times when you need to share your troubles with GOD and ask that He help you to navigate through your difficulties.

Every morning I take a long walk and spend part of this walk in prayer and meditation.  I always thank GOD that I am able to walk because I realize that some cannot.  I thank GOD for the big things and the little things and I often ask him to help me to be a better person. 

My mother has been having problems with her sight lately and I have been asking GOD to watch over her.  I hadn’t asked him to heal her because I felt that was a bit presumptuous of me to think that in the big scheme of things my concerns or desires should take precedence in the many things GOD is dealing with.

Over the weekend my mother woke up whimpering like a small child because she couldn’t see.  I felt so bad for her but of course I could do nothing for her.  I live over a thousand miles away so all I could do was pray for her. 

Monday night I tried to call her because I wanted to tell her that this may be only temporary and read to her how the Pope had lost his sight for a short period of time after a stroke.  I felt that by telling her this I would be giving her hope and she would find strength to deal with her situation.  Unfortunately I was unable to get in touch with her that night so I left a quick message and decided I would call her on Tuesday. 

Tuesday morning I went for my morning walk and after saying an Our Father I prayed that GOD would help my mother though this situation but midway through that I asked that GOD help her with her eyesight.  I wasn’t planning to ask GOD that but the words almost took upon them a life of their own. 

Almost immediately I apologized for my hubris and told GOD that I realized I didn’t deserve to ask him for something so important to me and assured him that I knew he wasn’t Santa just waiting to hear my wish list. 

Then this thought came into my head asking the question, what else is troubling me.    You may be surprised to learn that one of the things that was really bothering me was not about finances, my relationship, or anything like that.  As a matter of fact it really had nothing to do with me.

As a daughter of a policeman I always feel especially sad when I hear of the death of an officer.  When I was a little girl I was afraid my father might go to work and not come back.  This was especially true during the DC riots as we watched the devastation on television and it seemed as though the world was on fire. 

Like many others I was very concerned about the Christopher Dorner situation.  Dorner was a fugitive police officer bent on revenge who murdered three people before going on the run.  He threatened ‘asymmetrical warfare’ against Los Angeles police.

I said to GOD that I just wanted this evil to end that I didn’t want anyone else to die.  I told Him that I was worried about those people on his hit list that were living in fear.  I worried for those who might cross his path at the wrong time and wind up as collateral damage. 

I’m so tired of all the violence in the world.  I’m so very tired of hearing about man’s inhumanity to man.  I just wanted the violence to end.

Then almost as soon as I articulated my concerns I realized that riding the world of violence is a tall order so I placed my concerns in GOD’s hands and finished my walk.

I called my mother around 2PM yesterday to talk to her about the Pope.  I wanted to hear what she had to say.  What did she think about this historical event?   I also wanted to tell her my original message about the Pope’s temporary loss of vision years ago.

My sister Debbie answered the phone and the first words out of her mouth were, “Cathy, you are not going to believe this.  Mom woke up this morning around noon and her vision is OK."

I was shocked.  I was thrilled to hear it.  I knew that GOD had given her this blessing but still I was shocked that GOD would answer that selfish prayer of mine.  Trust me I knew this had nothing to do with me and everything to do with GOD.

Mom and I talked for a while and she seemed fascinated with the fact that the Pope had also temporarily lost his sight.  She also wanted to talk about food and all the other things Mom usually likes to talk about. 

When I got off the phone I turned the radio back on to learn that the police had Christopher Dorner pinned down in a cabin in Big Bear.  Dorner exchanged gunfire on Tuesday with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies and two officers were hurt. 

Once again I felt a bit surprised at the news.  Especially since police had been searching that area the day before with no luck and there was talk that he may have already fled to Mexico.  I knew that this situation would not end well.  I also knew that my prayer joined a chorus of other prayers that this situation would end without any more deaths.

The things that happened were not due to anything I said or did.  These events happened because they were GOD's will.  I do feel humbled, not because my prayers were so particularly powerful or that I had some sort of direct line to GOD that others did not have but because I felt that GOD heard my prayers.  I had allowed my expectations to be far above what I know to be possible except through him and he brought about what I had felt was impossible.