mindful

In our staff meeting Wednesday, I asked my co-workers, “What do you do to call God to mind during the day?” One person shared a breathing exercise: breathe God in and breathe out oneself. This practice agrees with John the Baptist’s statement about his ministry versus Jesus’s ministry: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” The exercise also calls to mind the Apostle Paul’s statement, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

Another staff member shared a technique for the end of the day. If you crawl into bed and start to say your prayers, only to leave them unfinished because you drifted off into sleep, then say your bedtime prayers with your arm raised. If you fall asleep, you arm will fall on you and wake you up!

If I find myself waiting in a checkout line or sitting at a traffic light, I try not to look at my phone, but pray the Jesus Prayer instead. Breathing in I pray, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” and breathing out I pray, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The Bible says, “Pray without ceasing.” Maybe none of us will be in constant communication with God until after we die and see God face-to-face, but we can move toward this goal right now. Try one of these little disciplines, and see if, over time, you aren’t more grateful to God for God’s blessings, and are a little more patient with the frustrations of daily life, as well as a little humbler about your successes in life.