In Reply to: Prayer and Devotions posted by Donny on November 14, 2002 at 00:23:37:
It was refreshing to read your story. I can relate with almost everything you say. Looking at my years in the supposedly Christian commission of the family I get the same lost feeling I used to get with all those devoted and spiritual Christians. I enjoyed the singing part of devotions and my readings but to sit down and hear somebody else’s readings was silly but I got used to that. I also got used to those more spiritual than me, man and women who knew so much because they were so spiritual and I learned to mind my own business contradicting my own understanding of Ezekiel. Swimming with sharks one learns their tricks to avoid their bite.
I dropped the singing and dancing part long time ago even though that was the nicest part of devotions but I don't yet understand its meaning other than a nice "quiet time" reading a nice religious book. After reading some person's view of Christianity, warp at that, how could I trust other people's views when I could get my own? I wonder if that "getting one's own view" is what devotion really is. We can read people's ideas but at the end it is our own what needs to develop and ultimately nobody else but us have the responsibility to develop it.
I came up with a similar conclusion about prayer but, what is prayer? Remember the 7 steps? Interesting procedure and it may work for many people many times but do we know what prayer really is, a conversation, a petition, an experience and communion, a listening state, a meditative attitude, all of the above? How much do we know about it? Is the Christian prayer the only one that's valid and real? After all we don't need to know everything about breathing yet we continually do it. Could devotions and payer mean the same thing?
Paraphrasing that wise man, the more I want to know the more I realize how little I know. It is perhaps this knowledge what fuels some of us on our journey and we talk, read, think, write, more than others. After all, what is the Word if it is not shared, even with ourselves? Another wise man said something like: If we think we already have all the answers, we are not as smart as we think we are. The trick might be to know more questions than answers then we can resume the journey.