Take our moments and our days

The labyrinth at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary is an aid to prayer. Photo by Mary Klassen.

As a student in the 1980s, Rebecca Slough tried to introduce morning and evening prayer at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), but she encountered little interest. I was one of the students who did not participate!

A decade ago, Eleanor Kreider began suggesting that Mennonites need a prayer book. Although she is a well-known missionary and teacher in North America, Europe, and Asia, and author of two fine books on worship, the time was not ripe.

And then something shifted. In 1999, I received a grant to study Christian traditions of morning and evening prayer, and to explore what they offer Protestants today. I was surprised when Mennonite pastors, denominational leaders, scholars, and folks in the pew reported that they were using various prayer books. Most were unaware of what the others were doing, but all were tapping into a time-honoured practice.

As part of my project, I taught morning and evening prayer at Bloomingdale Mennonite Church in Ontario where I was pastor. I was impressed with how meaningful this practice was for many in the congregation. Eventually I wrote The Rhythm of God’s Grace: Uncovering Morning and Evening Hours of Prayer (Paraclete, 2003), which explains the history, theology, and benefits of this venerable way of praying.

The positive response to this book suggests that many are coming to appreciate such forms of prayer.

Before we were colleagues, AMBS president, Nelson Kraybill, and I met at a party and discovered that we both love morning and evening prayer. We kept comparing notes and began wondering whether the time had come for an Anabaptist prayer book.

In September 2003, we called together a score of folks from the U.S. and Canada—pastors, leaders, scholars, journalists, and poets. Nelson and I planned a process to discuss this way of praying as we anticipated vigorous debate. But the group was chafing at the bit to develop an Anabaptist prayer book.

I continue to meet with positive response as I introduce this way of praying, both at the seminary and in the wider church. I am regularly asked for advice and recommendations about this tradition. It is out of these experiences that a group of us have drafted an Anabaptist prayer book.

But how do we understand a way of prayer that is unfamiliar to so many?


Finding biblical clues
It may be instructive to count the number of times the psalms speak of praying in the morning and evening. But the psalm writers are not proposing that believers limit their praying to those times. Rather, praying at certain times fosters being prayerful all the time.

Consider the repeated phrase in the first chapter of Genesis, “And there was evening and there was morning….” With this shorthand, the writer denotes not just evening and morning but the passage of the whole day. The psalmist longs for perpetual prayer: “From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised” (Psalm 113:3).

Jesus made a comparable recommendation. Aspects of his parable about the persistent widow may puzzle us, but his point is clear: his followers need “to pray always and not to lose heart” (Luke 18:1).

Paul urges believers to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). We are told, “Pray in the Spirit at all times” (Ephesians 6:18); “Devote yourselves to prayer” (Colossians 4:2); “Persevere in prayer” (Romans 12:12).

While the priority of constant prayer is clear, how to pray without ceasing is not apparent and has been a subject of controversy throughout church history.


Praying without ceasing
Most do not understand unceasing prayer to entail spending every moment in intentional conversation with God. Although some have tried to live on prayer alone—without working, eating, sleeping, or even going to the bathroom!—Christian tradition sensibly rejects such distortions.

Anabaptists are more likely to say, “My work or service is prayer.” This approach to unceasing prayer may be better than the extreme ones, but is it enough? In this secular age, many Christians are “functional atheists,” and their way of life is indistinguishable from that of their unbelieving neighbours.

Some Christians live and work with steady awareness of God, but most of us need help to do so. I know I do. Saying that everything we do is prayer may actually mean that we rarely pray.

Our Sunday giving reminds us that everything we have belongs to God. Offerings make us mindful that all our spending is theological and should be done in a spirit of worship and discernment. Sunday giving does not mean that because all we have belongs to God we do not have to set aside the first fruits. Nor does it mean that the portion we give on Sundays is all that we owe God.

In a similar way, morning and evening prayers remind us that all our time belongs to God. God always deserves our thanks, praise, and attention.

Morning and evening prayer is not about praying only at those times of day, any more than tithing is about granting God’s ownership of merely 10 percent of our money. Morning and evening symbolize all time. They are key daily moments when we set our direction, remember our purpose, review how God is at work, and recall where we missed God’s priorities.

I love the imagery in Psalm 65:8: “The gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.” Regular prayers at particular times encourage us to be prayerful always.


Supporting one another

Some are so disciplined in prayer that they do not require structure. Perhaps they are the “strong,” as Paul used the term. But I often run into people who struggle with prayer. They do not know how or when to pray, what to say, how to start, or when they are finished.

Many have trouble finding time for prayer. Challenges of busyness are among the most pressing spiritual issues today.

Whenever I teach this way of praying, people report, “Until now I was not able to pray.” Some had never settled into habits of prayer. Others had experienced a trauma and stopped praying. Prayer books helped these people pray again.

Prayer books give us the encouragement of praying with others. Anabaptists emphasize that we cannot be faithful on our own and cannot even understand the scriptures by ourselves. We need the body of Christ. Being a Christian is hard work and sometimes feels just plain foolish by the world’s standards. But it is a lot easier when we are supported by others and know that we are not alone.

We live in an individualistic culture, but Christian faith calls us to another way. Personal preference and wanting our private needs to be met disrupts fellowship and disfigures worship. Our current bias is to emphasize private and personal prayer, but this priority was not characteristic of Bible times or of the church in the early centuries.

Like all faithful living, praying relies on the help and encouragement of faithful others. Most Christians cannot be hermits. It might seem noble for each person to pray freely, spontaneously, alone, one’s own way, according to one’s own inspirations, but for most this approach does not work well.

Long ago, as a pastor and teacher of pastors, I learned not to take people’s prayer for granted. Too many people—including pastors—told me they had difficulty praying. I began to be surprised when someone said that they prayed regularly.


Taking scripture to heart
Most of the words in the morning and evening prayers included in the new Anabaptist prayerbook are scripture words. The Bible was written for prayer and worship. But more and more of us are less and less familiar with the Bible. Hopefully this resource will increase familiarity and even inspire renewed memorization of scripture.

The book is written in the spirit of sixteenth-century Anabaptists who published concordances of vital scripture texts. The intention is to use scriptures especially suited to praying by heart.


Resisting false choices
Spiritual disciplines, especially unfamiliar ones, are easily misunderstood. The approach in this new book is not the only way for all of us to pray. Many have rich prayer without such a resource. If this style of praying is a hindrance, don’t use it.

We are not advocating a “works righteousness” of prayer. The goal is not to be holier (or more prayerful) than thou. People have an unfortunate tendency to turn disciplines into ends, even idols; we often forget that such practices are intended to lead us to God but are not themselves divine.

Formal, organized prayer is not better than spontaneous prayer. We need not choose between prayer books and personal, heartfelt praying. We hope that the book deepens prayer, gives more subjects for prayer, and expands people’s relationship with God.

This book can be adapted to personal use. Users are welcome to add songs, scripture readings, silence, and other disciplines; they may want to shorten the services to suit their purposes.

This discipline connects us in prayer with others. Benedictine monks have a beautiful tradition: toward the end of each of seven daily services, they pray for absent sisters and brothers.

We need one another’s support, perhaps especially when we are not together. We can connect deeply when we share scriptures and prayers.

Let us reject unhelpful choices between individual and group, spontaneous and scheduled, casual and structured. Let us find a dynamic balance between the personal and the communal, impromptu and fixed times, free and planned modes of prayer.

Morning and evening prayer touches on issues that run throughout Christian history: the relationship of individual and corporate prayer, unplanned and set prayers, fixed-time and unceasing prayer.

This new collection of prayers is offered in a spirit of testing and hope that it may enrich the prayer of the church. To paraphrase an old hymn, we pray: “Take our moments and our days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.”—Arthur Paul Boers

The writer teaches pastoral theology and coordinates spiritual formation at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Indiana.

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