jim henson

Sunday Snippets is brought to you each week by RAnn at a This, That and the Other Thing.

Music Monday this week was Mendelssohn's Hear My Prayer. Art and Beauty Tuesday was a beautiful black and white painting of an angel by Ryan Brown. Poetry Wednesday was a poem of mine entitled Finding Your Angel and Scripture Saturday was about questioning God.

In between I had a post about donating to The Animal Rescue Site (with a free click) for St. Francis' feast day, a post about the Rosary for the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and one about disability awareness.

So many of the night prayers use psalms that cry out to God.  Psalm 87 has a number of questions directed to God.  Many directly question even the existence of heaven itself.

The psalmist tells God that, like the dead, he feels he is cut off from God's care.

I am one of the dead,
like the murdered who sleep in their tombs,
who lie there forgotten,
cut off from your care.

Is it for the dead that you perform your wonders?

Will the ghosts rise up and proclaim you?

In the tomb, will they tell of your kindness?

Will they tell of your faithfulness in the place of the lost?

Will your wonders be known in the darkness,or your righteousness in the land of oblivion?

I think the questions are two fold.  On one hand, the pray-er asks the Lord what could be accomplished if he or she were indeed no longer alive? It is a sort of bargaining with God--Lord, what good would I do if I were no longer on the earth?

On the other hand, they might be real questions of faith.  What happens after this life is over?  Will I be able to praise God from the grave?

Why are these questions asked so much during night prayer? Is it some kind of weird fascination with morbidity?

I think it is because night prayer, or compline, is said right before going to sleep.  The dark hours of the night are when the demons we fight often come out and it is sometimes difficult to keep them at bay.

These brutally honest prayers beg God to help us navigate this confusing and sometimes difficult world we face. I think God can handle questions.  I think he can handle anger and frustration.

The one line reading that follows this psalm is from the book of Jeremiah.

Lord, you are in our midst, we are called by your name. Do not desert us, O Lord our God!

God is there for us.
In the night.
In the dark.
In the confusion
and in the fear.

I keep coming back to the rosary.

As much as I try to travel down the road of prayer that is "off the top of my head", most of the time, I come back to the prayers of the Church--the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Scripture reading and the Jesus Prayer.

I have discovered fervent, short prayer to be especially affective.  The fewer words I say, when praying "on my own", the better the outcome usually is.  For other times, though, my own prayers tend to be obsessive and too inwardly focused.  I find I do not benefit from setting aside time to worry as a spiritual practice.  The worries come.  God knows they are there.

Praying is necessary, however.  Praying is helpful.  Prayer is communion with God.  The rosary and other similar prayers are especially helpful when no words of my own will suffice, which, for me, is most of the time.

I also find pre-formulated prayer to be helpful in reining in spiritual pride. If I meditate on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, I am focusing on Jesus' sacrifice and not on my own mind. 

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary and October's devotion. 

Try praying this prayer with the Church this month