Lynne Baab

Prayer as Listening to God: Key Questions

Saturday January 13 2018

Last week I wrote about the importance of letting passages from the Bible dwell in our hearts and minds, so that we can allow God to speak to us through the scriptures. In the next three weeks, I’ll write posts on practical ways to do that, but before I do, I want to address an important question someone posed on Facebook last week as a response to my post from last week.

Here’s the question: “How does one check that what one ‘receives’ through bedtime meditation on, say, the Lord’s Prayer, as its meaning is really what Jesus intended the meaning of the Prayer to be rather than eisegesis of it?”

Eisegesis means a reader imposing his or her meaning on the text.

The original meaning and intent of a passage of scripture matters. I would never recommend that meditative approaches to the Bible should replace deep, serious study of the Bible. We must study carefully, and rely on others who do it.

Careful, deep, serious study of the Bible includes looking at the original languages, Hebrew and Greek, along with examination of the historical setting, consideration of what we know about the author of each text, and observation of the way each passage fits into the whole of that biblical book and the Bible as a whole.

All of this serious study needs to be done in conversation with Christians today and from the past. Many Christians don’t know Greek or Hebrew or the details about the history of Israel, but we can rely on those who do.

However, even if we got the intent of the author correct, even if we knew exactly what Jesus intended when he said something to his followers, how would we be sure that we had heard what God intended for us to hear today, in our cultural setting and in the specifics of our lives?

The Christian church has a long history of careful and deep study of the Bible, coupled with pondering and reflection on biblical passages. I am advocating rediscovery of the latter without abandoning the former.

Let me zero in on the first few works of the question posed on Facebook: “How do I check . . .?”

Let’s imagine I am meditating on Ephesians 5:21-33, the passage about husbands and wives. As a wife, maybe I am struck by Paul’s instruction to respect my husband, and maybe I come up with several ideas of how to do that better. My sense of how God is guiding me parallels the love passage in I Corinthians 13. So, I can “check” my own application of the passage against other parts of the Bible.

I can also talk to my own husband along these lines: “I’ve been pondering Ephesians 5, and I think God is telling me to work harder at respecting you in these ways. What do you think?”

I might talk with other wives about what I am hearing God say.

Let me give you two extreme examples that show why checking matters. Imagine that as I am pondering the passage, I come to believe that my husband isn’t loving me in a way that’s consistent with Paul’s instructions in verses 25 to 29. Suppose I start thinking that because he’s not living up to the Bible, God is calling me to kill him. (For the record, my husband is one of the most loving individuals I know, so this scenario is totally imaginary.)

A second extreme example comes from the true story in Under the Banner of Heaven, a book by Jon Krakauer. He describes two brothers who believed that God was calling them to murder a woman and baby. I found  it one of the most upsetting books I had ever read, because it portrayed so vividly the certainty of the men that they had heard God’s voice.

These are extreme examples of eisegesis. If I – or the men in Krakauer’s book – checked our interpretation against the rest of the Bible (which prohibits murder) and Christian history (which also prohibits murder), and if we talked with others about our interpretation, we would (hopefully) not receive any encouragement or confirmation that God was speaking to us in that way.  

The purpose of meditating on the Bible is to hear God speak to us. Most often, God’s voice speaks of love for others and for ourselves, a voice calling us to rest in God’s love and peace, and to work hard at extending love to those near and far, even those who hate us or with whom we are angry. We can miss that that call to love when we focus solely on intellectual approaches to the Bible, despite their value.

We can also hear God’s voice inaccurately, which is why we especially need to check what we are hearing. When God’s voice contradicts the overall message of the Bible, Christian history, and the voices of people we respect, we need to move very slowly in new directions. However, God does still speak in new ways, so we need to remain open to that as well.

(Next week: lectio divina, one way to approach scripture with an intent to listen. Illustration by Dave Baab. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column.)

Lenten Devotional - downloadable

Lent begins on Valentine’s Day this year. If you’d like an unusual devotional for Lent, check out the one I wrote a couple of years ago with reflection questions on a psalm for each day of Lent. I've had good feedback from people who have used it on their own and also from others who used it in a small group. My husband Dave’s beautiful paintings provide illustrations for it. Available here.

Listening to God in Prayer: A New Approach to the Bible

Saturday January 6 2018

When we think of reading the Bible, many of us think about how we wish we could take more time for serious Bible study. Many of us were nurtured in our Christian faith through intensive Bible study. In Bible study groups, we analyzed Biblical passages and thought hard about how to apply the passages in our lives. We expected God to speak to us through our study and analysis. Maybe we also memorized verses of Scripture, trying to store God’s word in our heart.

All of this is good, and all of this has been a major part of my Christian journey. The contemplative approach to the Bible takes these patterns of Bible study a step further. We embrace disciplines that can help us to hear God’s voice through the Scriptures.

First and foremost, the contemplative pattern of interacting with the Scriptures is a pattern of meditation on a biblical passage: spending time allowing the Word to sink deep into our souls, letting the Truth penetrate our whole being. The groundwork laid by intensive Bible study and Scripture memory can be very helpful, but we are invited to go a step further, to spend time quietly living with a passage of Scripture.

Meditation on the Scriptures has a long history in both Jewish and Christian tradition. In recent centuries, with our emphasis on science and objective truth, we have neglected meditation in favor of analysis and cognitive understanding.

Midlife is an excellent time to return to the ancient pattern of meditation upon Scripture. Receptive, quiet reflection on a Biblical passage can help us address many of the issues of midlife: enabling us to hear God’s voice of guidance and acceptance, helping us let go of the illusion of control, giving us the opportunity to slow down and quiet the many voices that surround us.

The writer of Psalm 1 was well acquainted with this slow, quiet absorption with the Scriptures. Here is a description of those who obey God: “Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2).

Best-selling writer Richard Foster writes that examples of the contemplative tradition abound in the Bible: “From the Psalmist, who meditated upon God’s character, law, and creation, to Mary, the mother of Jesus, who pondered all things in her heart; from Elijah, who kept a lonely vigil over earthquake, wind and fire, to Mary of Bethany, who chose to sit at Jesus’ feet.” [1] 

When we spend time with a passage from the Bible, pondering in our hearts the way God works and asking God to speak to us, we are entering into this long Christian tradition of contemplation and meditation. When we sit at Jesus’ feet by reading about him in one of the Gospels and living with that story for a while, expecting Jesus to be present in our thoughts and prayers, we are entering into contemplation and meditation. When we walk through our neighborhood, thinking about a Scripture we know by heart or weighing the issues discussed in a recent Bible study, we are engaging in Christian meditation.

All these activities require a commitment to slow down and allow space to ponder the work of God and to listen for God’s word to us this day. In our busy and rushed world, making time for reflection will probably be the greatest challenge facing us if we want to move towards contemplative prayer and meditation.

In addition, we may experience the challenge of not knowing how to start. Three long-standing patterns of engagement with the Scriptures can provide a structure for a meditative approach to the Bible: lectio divina (sacred reading), Ignatian prayer, and praying the psalms. In the next three posts, I’ll write about each of these three.

If you’d like to make a start, pick something from the Bible that you know by heart, perhaps all or part of Psalm 23 or the Lord’s Prayer. This week, as you lay in bed at night, wait at stop lights, stand in line at the grocery store, or wait for someone to show up, go back over and over to those words. Ponder them, and let God speak to you through them.

(Next week: the ancient prayer form lectio divina. Illustration: Princess Di Garden, Cambridge, UK, by Dave Baab. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “Subscribe” in the right hand column. This post is adapted from my book A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife.)

Some past Christmas and New Year’s posts you might enjoy:

• Two postures for entering the New Year
• Quotations I love: Five quotations about thankfulness
• What I learned about the Incarnation from experiencing Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere
• These are a few of my favorite things for the Christmas season
• Bringing my whole self to the manger

[1] Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1998), page 49.

Prayer as listening to God: Looking back at 2017

Saturday December 30 2017

A year is ending. A new year begins in a few days. Newspapers and magazines are full of ideas for New Year’s resolutions, and how to keep them.

I wish more people wrote and talked about how to look back on the past year in a way that is fruitful and helpful. As a way to do that, I want to propose a prayer of examen for the whole year.

I wrote last week about Examen, an ancient prayer form that focuses on identifying where God was present and where we resisted God. The prayer has four movements, which I’ll describe and illustrate below. In many monastic settings, monks and nuns prayed the prayer of examen every night, looking back over the day.

The person who taught me examen called it “a gentle, unforced noticing.” I’m going to suggest numerous questions to reflect on, so you can look back at a whole year. Please engage with these questions in an gentle, unforced way. Let the questions help you see God’s hand in your life and your response to God.

1.Examen of Consciousness. Begin by thinking back over your year. What good things happened? Where did you see God’s hand in the good things? What aspects of the good things were clearly gifts from God?

What hard things happened? In what ways did God help you in the hard things? What good outcomes can you identify from the hard things?

Think back on the early months of the year. What were you praying for in those months? What answers did you see later in the year?

Use the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23 to look back at the year. In what moments did you experience love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control in yourself or in those who you love?

2. Response to the Examen of Consciousness. In whatever way works for you, spend some time responding to God’s presence in your life in 2017. You may want to thank God verbally for the ways God was present in the year. You may want to imagine yourself turning to Jesus and smiling at him. You may want to sing a song or hymn.

3.Examen of Conscience. Listen to your conscience to help identify the ways you resisted God this past year. Do you have clear instances when you know God was calling you to do something and you didn’t do it? Can you see times when you did something you know didn’t please God?

Go back to the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control – and ponder instances when the Holy Spirit may have been nudging you in the direction of one of those fruits, and you chose to do things your way.

Imagine that Jesus was walking beside you all year. What moments during the year would you have felt embarrassed or ashamed to have Jesus close by?

4. Response to the Examen of Conscience. In whatever feels comfortable to you, bring those moments of resistance to God. You may want to ask God for forgiveness for the times you did not respond in obedience or love. You may want to read one of the penitential psalms as a way to bring these thoughts to God. Try Psalm 32, 51 or 130. You may want to say to yourself: “Whenever we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us” (based on 1 John 1:9).

Examen is a lovely prayer to do on our own or with others. If you have a spiritual partner – a friend, spouse, prayer partner – or a small group with whom you share honestly, consider working through the questions above with that person or group.

Noticing God's presence is part of learning to hear God's voice. We rob ourselves of his voice of joy and peace when we forget to look back at the past and identify the places God was present. We rob ourselves of joy and peace when we neglect to confess our shortcomings and hear God's voice of forgiveness.

(Next week: A new approach to the Bible. Illustration by Dave Baab. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “Subscribe” in the right hand column.)

Some past Christmas and New Year’s posts you might enjoy:

• Two postures for entering the New Year
• Quotations I love: Five quotations about thankfulness
• What I learned about the Incarnation from experiencing Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere
• These are a few of my favorite things for the Christmas season
• Bringing my whole self to the manger

Listening to God in Prayer: Noticing God’s Presence

Thursday December 21 2017

Have you noticed all the emphasis these days on mindfulness? Pay attention, people are saying and writing, to what’s going on right now in your life. Breathe. Be present and notice.

Christians have emphasized a form of noticing for centuries. In the ancient prayer of examen, we take time to look back and try to see the hand of God in our lives. Examen, like all contemplative prayer forms, is most effective when it is unforced, when we try to let our awareness of God float into our minds rather than forcing ourselves to review every event in an analytical fashion to see if we can detect the presence of God.

First, select a period of time to focus on. It’s best to look at one day, although you could also choose to look at a period of a few days or even a week. Focus your thoughts and your heart on the time period you have selected. Ask God to bring to mind one or two times when God was present in your life.

Don’t analyze. Don’t try to go sequentially through all the events in that time period. Just try to gently notice. In the prayer of examen, to notice is to pay attention, to turn your gaze from worries about the future and absorption in present tasks to events that took place, the meaning you placed on them, and the possibility that God was working in and through what happened.

When you are able to identify one or two times when God was present to you, respond to God in the light of your noticing. You may want to imagine yourself holding in your hand that moment of God’s presence, offering it back to God in thanks. You may want to picture yourself smiling at God. You may want to thank God for that moment using words.

Continue in an atmosphere of noticing. This time, ask God to bring to mind one or two moments when you resisted God’s presence. Again, don’t try to analyze or examine your life’s events sequentially. Try to let a memory of resistance to God float into your conscious mind.

When you are able to identify one or more moments when you resisted God, spend some time responding to God. You may want to pray, “Lord have mercy.” You may want to offer that moment to God and ask him to heal and transform you. You may want to move into a time of confession of sin.

We so often forget to take the time to notice the patterns of our lives. Examen is a lovely discipline because it gives a structure to pay attention to God’s working. Often God is present in our lives and we fleetingly experience that presence, but we rush on to the next event and we neglect to ponder the patterns of his presence and to thank God for the gift of our awareness of him. Examen gives us the opportunity to notice the hand of God, something many midlife folks are longing for.

Examen also gives us the opportunity to notice the patterns of our resistance to God’s work in our lives. Sometimes we can change those patterns by conscious discipline. More often all we can do is offer our patterns of resistance to God and ask for his help and mercy. Either way, simply noticing our resistance makes us more likely to notice God’s presence next time.

My husband and I have found that the prayer of examen has impacted the way we talk to each other at the end of the day. Often my husband will ask me at bedtime, “When did you feel closest to God today?” or “When did you experience God’s hand in your life today?” I am always grateful for that question, because it makes me stop and notice.

Examen is a wonderful discipline for midlife. The speed of our lives and the necessity to focus on the future keeps us from recognizing when God has been at work in us. So many of us long for meaning and the assurance that life has value. What better way to find meaning and value than to take the time to notice what God is already doing?

(Next week: looking back on 2017 in preparation for the new year. Illustration: Golden Gardens in Seattle by Dave Baab. If you'd like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under "subscribe" in the right hand column. This post adapted from my book A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife.)

*** If Advent isn’t feeling real to you, even though Christmas is rapidly approaching, I encourage you to download my Advent Devotional, which links psalms with the themes of Advent. Even if you work through only one set of questions, pondering relevant psalm may help you be more ready for Christmas. ***

Prayer as Listening to God: Distractions in silent prayer

Wednesday December 13 2017

If we want to listen to God in prayer, we have to quiet our racing minds. Several metaphors involving water have been helpful to me as I have encountered the inevitable struggles with wandering thoughts during contemplative prayer.

The wandering thoughts can include worries and preoccupations about my own life or the lives of people I love, projects I’m working on that I can’t resist thinking about, noises or other distractions from the physical environment, or even analysis of the spiritual profundity of what I’m experiencing. These distracting thoughts are particularly common at the beginning of a quiet prayer time, but they can unfortunately be all too frequent throughout the period of silence.

One of the people who led many of my early contemplative prayer experiences talked about these wandering thoughts as boats on a river. We can watch the boats, she said, and notice they are there, but we need to avoid the temptation of getting onto the boat and rummaging around in the hold. When we find ourselves boarding the boat and unpacking its contents, we can imagine ourselves stepping back off the boat and letting it float down the river without us.

Later someone else told me about the metaphor of a leaf on a river. This leader suggested that when we notice we have left the topic of the prayer and our minds have begun down another path, we view the random thought as a leaf. We let it float lightly down the river.

In her wonderful book Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, Adele Ahlberg Calhoun suggests one more river metaphor to help with distracting thoughts. She suggests that we imagine God’s river of life running through us. Deep down in the river, the water is calm and slow, but the surface is cluttered with turmoil and debris. We can imagine our distracting thoughts as a part of that debris and turmoil on the surface, and let that part of the river be carried away by the current. The goal of quiet prayer is to return to the depth of the river where the presence of Jesus imparts peace and calm. [1]

I like the river analogies. Jesus compares the Holy Spirit to living water (John 7:37-39), and in Revelation, the river of the water of life flows through the heavenly city (Revelation 22:1-2). In contemplative prayer I relinquish my worries, my tendency to analyze everything, my preoccupations about work and all my other concerns into the hands of the Holy Spirit, who will take those thoughts into the River of Life. My concerns float lightly on the river like leaves. With the help of the Holy Spirit, those preoccupations and worries are not heavy and leaden. Instead, they float away, as light as leaves, entrusted into God’s loving care.

Calhoun suggests another metaphor to help with distracting thoughts. Imagine, she suggests, that you are visiting a friend who lives in a busy urban setting. The windows are open because it is a warm day, and you can hear the street noise and the voices of passersby. Sometimes you even hear sirens. But you love your friend and want to be attentive, so although you notice the sounds coming from outside the window, you don’t let your mind engage with them. Over and over, you return your focus to your friend. In the same way, in silent prayer, over and over you return your focus to Christ with you. [2]

Calhoun’s busy street metaphor is helpful in a slightly different way than the water metaphors because it emphasizes relationship. Jesus has invited us to be his friends (John 15:12-17), and when we spend time with any friend, we can find distractions to be troubling. But our love for our friend draws us back continually into conversation, caring, and listening. Our priority is our relationship with our friend, and in any form of prayer, our priority is our attention to God in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

When leading contemplative prayer experiences, describing one of these metaphors for the group can be helpful, particularly with longer prayer experiences such as centering prayer, described below. Most people experience a lot of guilt when learning to engage in contemplative prayer because they are ashamed of their wandering minds. Everyone’s mind wanders in silent prayer, and the water and friend metaphors can help us return to an awareness of God’s presence over and over as we pray.

(Next week: looking back on our lives to see God’s hand at work. Illustration by Dave Baab. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column.)

Most of the posts in this series are adapted from my book A Renewed Spirituality, but this post is excerpted from another one of my books, Joy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your Congregation. Joy Together discusses the pros and cons of engaging in various spiritual practices alone and with others, and it has six chapters on how to engage in specific spiritual practices – fasting, contemplative prayer, contemplative approaches to scripture, hospitality, communal discernment, and Sabbath keeping – with small groups and even whole congregations.

[1] Adele Ahlborg Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 209.[2] Ibid.