🙇🏻♂️ A Prayer for the Occupied Mind
Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on earth." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Genesis 1 : 26-27
O Lord, to forget that you have created me! That all my purpose can only be accessed through you! To wonder at these words where you describe us as "according to your likeness"!
My heart is hardened because I forget to pray with genuine feeling; I forget that my entire being is through you God and that to realise I am completely indebted to you is joyful recollection. Who I am, where I am, what I have, must be everything I need to reach You. Other human beings O God you have set before me as a window to you. My love and my orientation to the people around me is a direct reflection of my relationship with you. Soften my heart O Lord to the people around me! For my soul is weak, and my love feeble!
My mind is always adrift, wishing things were otherwise, hating things past, and dreading things to come. If I could but pause the thinking and just listen to my heart beat softly against my breast, the life flowing around my entire body! To hear and feel the breath you have bestowed upon me every moment I live! What a joy to behold! For what is this holy temple I abide in to exist for? What shall I do with this breath, the energy in my body, my desire to create, my desire to speak, my desire to listen, my desire to taste - what else should I do anything for if not to rejoice and cherish the moments You have given me!
Oh, but to pray is to exist! How long have I spent in anxious wondering about things past, and whether I shall live another day! But yet Lord, You tell me to be anxious for nothing, and You point at how the single sparrow seems to always find food and shelter each day. I never live in the moment which You have given me, for my mind is always adrift!
Look at the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the lions, the sheep, the trees and grass, the snow, the mountains, the ant; - they all just live, without thinking about what is happening to them. They do not live in time as we do, nor dwell on the past and future as much as we do! Imagine asking a dog or a chicken what the time is? They would be confused by the question and only know to utter back: "the time is now".
Everything You give me Lord is a gift. Everything is established for me to cherish. And if painful times do come upon me, help me Lord to have the wisdom to accept it as it is. So be it, Lord! Everything is done for Your glorification. All pain, all misfortune, all death, all suffering are just stepping stones towards You. Lord, You gave us dominion over all creation, and thus there is nothing that I should fear. And if another should wrong me, let me immediately see my own faults and that I am not disturbed. But heaven forbid that I resort to judge another and condemn him!
No one is less than myself, and if everyone is equal to me, how could I see fit to judge and criticise another without first looking at myself? I have a huge plank in my own eye! What futility then to advise another for his faults, if then I will always see them as larger than they are, and the good as less than it is!
How my dissatisfaction is just blindness towards You! All my sadness, grief, anger, irritation, laziness, is just a symptom of my ignorance of Your immediate presence with me. If only I realise more often that You are with me only now, and never yesterday, or tomorrow, but now, how I will live my life with such splendorous action!