Devotional gut check

You know those mornings when you go about doing your normal devotional time and you read something and it basically knocks you out? Something so profound hits you and it bleeds through the rest of your day and even into the rest of the week? I guess it is like have a full throttle energy drink when the buzz hits and it carries you through a while...

Well, such was my morning. Instead of telling you what hit me in the reading I will simply post the reading here for you. Maybe God will use it for you like He is/has for me.

This is from Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan Kallistos Ware:
"As soon as we make a serious attempt to pray in spirit and in truth, at once we become acutely conscious of our interior disintegration, of our lack of unity and wholeness. In spite of all our efforts to stand before God, thoughts continue to move restlessly and aimlessly through our head, like the buzzing of flies....
To contemplate means, first of all, to be present where one is - to be here and now. But usually we find ourselves unable to restrain our mind from wandering at random over time and space. We recall the past, we anticipate the future, we plan what to do next; people and places come before us in unending succession. We lack power to gather ourselves into the one place where we should be - here, in the presence of God; we are unable to fully live in the only moment that truly exists - now, the immediate present.
This interior disintegration is one of the most tragic consequences of the Fall. The people who get things done, it has been justly observed, are the people who do one thing at a time. But to do one thing at a time is no mean achievement. While difficult enough in external work, it is harder still in the work of inner prayer."
(From the Power of the Name, by Kallistos Ware)

Labels: Formation, Monastic, Prayer