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Psalm 23
by Estee in

My prayer life is usually scattered. I always have good intentions but poor follow-through. I have a new tradition, however, of spending some time in the chapel at church on Monday mornings after I drop Jude off in his daycare class. I really don't have an excuse -- his classroom is right next to the door to the chapel. I should spend more time there than just Monday mornings, but hey, it's a start.

This Monday, I had trouble being present to my prayers. My mind kept wandering to things that I needed to do when I got back to my office. Despite my best intentions, I couldn’t make myself focus. In one of my seminary classes, we are assigned a psalm a week to reflect on. This week's choice was Psalm 23, so I tried meditating on that, hoping that it would slow me down a little.

Although my meditation was sporadically distracted by other, non-pertinent thoughts, I found myself coming back to the lines “he makes me lie down in green pastures.” Those words are familiar, but I'd never really thought about them before. As I repeated these words to myself, I became aware of what God was calling to me in that moment.

God called me to lie down, to stop, to enjoy the silence, to breathe. In that moment, I understood that God makes me lie down, God forces me to let go when I'm unable to release my anxiety on my own. God says “stop worrying. You’ll get to that soon enough. Right now, just lie down. Let it be. Rest in my presence.” And I discovered that once I was open to this, then my mind calmed down its running a little bit, my body relaxed, my breathing slowed. And I was led beside still waters: my soul was restored.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.

2 comments:

Jason said...

Are there other ways in which you soul becomes restored? Could those other things be considered prayers or is a prayer life that which is done in a meditative/conversation with the Divine?

I need to find ways in which to get my soul restored and looking for ideas.

Rev. David N. Mosser, Ph.D. said...

You have hit on a modern dilemma. We are distracted by many things. The more responsibility, then the more distractions. I find meditating over a short scripture text (like Estee did) is a good way to begin.

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