Prayer for Beginners by Peter Kreeft

Author:Peter Kreeft [Kreeft, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898707755
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2009-06-12T05:00:00+00:00

10

WORK

Praying Always

We are commanded to “pray constantly” (1 Thess 5:17). But most of our life is filled with actions. Therefore our actions can also be a form of prayer. Brother Lawrence says, “We are as strictly obliged to adhere to God by action in the time of action as by prayer in the time of prayer” (Conversation 4). The practice of the presence of God, though we begin it at special times of prayer, is designed to spill out and over and into all times.

God designed us to be animals (rational animals), not angels. He put us into a material world, and he put into our nature the need for many kinds of material actions, such as eating, sleeping, begetting, and working. He could not possibly have designed these things to be distractions and obstacles to our sanctification, but only means to it, for he designed everything to be a means to that end. Therefore we can pray even in working (not just as we work); we can make our works prayers.

How do we make our works prayer? Not by changing our work (unless our work is sinful or shoddy or dishonest or lazy), but by changing our motive. Instead of peeling potatoes because we want to taste them, we peel them because we love God, the God who wants us to peel potatoes right now. Brother Lawrence says to “pick up a straw for the love of God” (Conversation 2). Mother Teresa said, “Some theologians talk too much. They should pick up a broom and sweep the room. That says enough.”

God designed us to reach holiness in and through doing little things, such as cleaning up a room, driving children to soccer, balancing the checkbook, or peeling potatoes. These times are holy, too, and these times are his, too. He does not want only our “quality time” (a fake and dishonest phrase if there ever was one; ask any child); he wants all our time, for the same reason he does not want only part of our heart but our whole heart: because he is our Lover, not our boss.

He wants our work time as well as our “prayer time” because he designed work as well as prayer for us, and he designed them both for the same reason. As Pascal says, “God instituted prayer in order to impart to us his creatures the dignity of being causes” (Pensées).

He put us into a world full of “little things”, so we must conclude that they are the road he designed for us to come to him and he to us, and therefore they are big things. He says this himself, in a warning whose seriousness we seldom notice: “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches?” (Lk 16:10-11).

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