The Minute Mind

“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense His grace.” Matthew 6:6 (The Message)

“Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage.” Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But it’s actually one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. This is one of the key elements of meditation. Just be there. We spend much of our time with our bodies in one place and our minds in another. People will sit in the pews of a church and respond with “Amen!” while their minds are on the lunch that they are about to eat. Sometimes the preacher will preach his sermon while wondering in his mind how that parishioner is reacting to the new hymnbooks, the position of the piano, or if his hair is in place.

Try to discipline your mind to think fully about what you are working on. If we focused our entire mind on our work while we were working, there’s no telling what we could get done. But our minds are too undisciplined. Try this. Take an analog clock. Remove the cover and place a small fluorescent dot on the end of the second hand. Sit down and place the clock in front of you at a comfortable angle so you can easily keep your eyes on it. Relax and try to think of nothing else but that dot for one minute. Every time your mind wanders or you become aware of other things simply stop and try again when the second hand reaches the top. Hard, isn’t it? You mind starts playing games with you. You start remembering all the things you have to do. You suddenly remember it’s Aunt Frieda’s birthday and you haven’t thought of her for years! When you get to the point where you can focus fully and unreservedly on that dot for one minute, step up the difficulty a little. Place the clock in front of the TV. Turn on the TV but mute the sound so that you only have the flickering images behind the clock. Now try it. If you can get to the point where you can focus completely and entirely on that, turn up the volume and try it.

What does this have to do with prayer? It is that kind of discipline, that kind of focused awareness that is required for effective prayer. It is not some kind of gift that God will zap you with some day. Like anything else, it requires work. If you don’t want to work at it, then don’t whine about your wimpy prayer life.