A good friend shared with me a great prayer lesson. He said, “When I focus on God and not praying then it becomes so much easier. ” It reminded me of a quote by Abraham Heschel, a jewish Rabbi, who said, “The focus of prayer is not prayer, but God.” Sometimes, I forget this. When I started my one hour a day prayer discipline for Lent, I can honestly confess that I was more focused on getting the “task” of prayer done, than God. I think that much of this was symptomatic of the struggle of simply carving out an hour of time for prayer from my day. After I learned to do that I could settle more into prayer and really become focus

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I have been praying an hour a day since Lent began and am noticing some shifts in me. Here they are after two and a half weeks:

First, a growing ability to focus. When I first started praying an hour a day my attention wandered every where. Now I am getting more adept at letting go of distractions and really entering into a time with God. I spend 20 minutes of the hour in centering prayer which is a practice of sitting quietly before God and listening. Initially, I was opening my eyes and peeking at my watch nearly every five minutes. Three days ago I was so into praying that the first time I peeked I

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I love Lent and always try to take on a commitment that is going to have a transformative effect on me. This year I adopted praying one hour a day. This one hour at first was excruciatingly difficult to carve out. I have 2 kids, a spouse, a job, and volunteer a lot of hours. I am finding out though how to do it. For those of you interested in doing an hour a day or just expanding your prayer here are some lessons I have learned thus far:
1) Break it up. I pray a half hour early in the day. And then a half hour in the evening after everyone has gone to bed.
2) Have a

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When I survey people about what is the hardest thing about prayer two core issues repeatedly come up: Finding the time, staying focused. There are a couple of ways to tackle finding the time. First off, let’s own the reality that we find time for what’s important to us. If you aren’t finding time recognize to some degree it is a priority problem. Face it if you are to busy to pray…you are probably to busy. So, hey you may have to get rid of something. But before doing that try linking prayer to something that is already a routine for you. Link it to a meal, a commute, or something as simple as walking to and from your car whenever you

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