Image by Nutmeg Designs via FlickrMark Roberts wrote a reflection a few weeks ago on the Higher Calling website about framing your day with God’s love and faithfulness.
Roberts based his idea on Psalm 92: 2:
It is good to proclaim your unfailing love in the morning,
your faithfulness in the evening.,
He wrote, “ I wonder what would happen if you were to take Psalm 92:2 very literally. What difference might it make in your life if the first thing you did when you got up in the morning was to proclaim God’s unfailing love, and the last thing you did was to proclaim his faithfulness?
I took him up on his challenge and have been praying about God’s unfailing love first thing in the morning and His unfailing faithfulness as I go to sleep at night. Here is what I have learned:
1. Since I already have the practice of Examen at night (see my post re this here) adding a prayer of thankfulness for God’s faithfulness was easy for me. Yet I paused as I have been praying this, wondering how faithful I had been that day or in awe of how God never failed to leave my side.
2. To be honest I didn’t always remember to proclaim God’s unfailing love each morning. This will be a harder practice to implement. There is the old joke about some people get up each morning saying, “Good God, it’s morning.” and others wake up with the words, “Good morning, God.” Too often I wake up in the first group though I want to be in the last group. On the few mornings so far when I have pondered God’s love, no words come. I rest silently in His arms, drinking in His love into my parched soul.
3. Roberts calls this prayer framing your day. Others may think of it as bookends. My image for God’s love is His arms gently surrounding me and I nestled into His heart like a toddler on His lap. His faithfulness covered me above like the sky and below like the foundation of the earth. I am surrounded by God’s love and faithfulness.
4. The word “unfailing” produces praise in my prayers. Just consider how God is unfailing: – dependable, reliable, trustworthy, constant, abiding, lasting, unshakeable, enduring, continuous, infallible, inexhaustible, sure, true, and unchanging.
Psalm 92:2 has nourished my prayer life and I will continue to learn from this type of prayer.
How about you? How has your prayer life been nourished lately?
