- Oct 26, 2005
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Brian McClaren on The Jesus Prayer
I got what is probably the second worst news of my life...
I was also far from home, alone, jet-lagged, and in a hotel room...
And I was in the middle of that for all of the long hours of a long night, and there was nothing I could do about it....
And there was nowhere to go and nothing to do but, in a sense, to lie on my hotel bed and spread out my arms and legs on this cross of bad news and suffer until the suffering was done washing over me...
But sometime in my suffering, a memorized prayer managed to fight its way from my memory into my consciousness and started saying itself.
It's known as the Jesus Payer, and there are a few versions of it, but my version is, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
Again, I did this against my religious upbringing, which as I said didn't believe in memorizing and reciting prayers, but required all prayers to be "from the heart," meaning spontaneous.
But I'm glad I violated my upbringing [by having memorized it] because I discovered that learning something by heart can save you when your heart is broken so nothing can come from it except tears,
and spontaneity is simply another burden on an already overburdened soul....
I am experiencing this memorized prayer even now, days later.
It feels like an engine running in my mind, as if the power went out and this prayer is the generator that's keeping me going.
p. 196-198
Finding Our Way Again, Brian McClaren
2008, Thomas Nelson Publishers
I got what is probably the second worst news of my life...
I was also far from home, alone, jet-lagged, and in a hotel room...
And I was in the middle of that for all of the long hours of a long night, and there was nothing I could do about it....
And there was nowhere to go and nothing to do but, in a sense, to lie on my hotel bed and spread out my arms and legs on this cross of bad news and suffer until the suffering was done washing over me...
But sometime in my suffering, a memorized prayer managed to fight its way from my memory into my consciousness and started saying itself.
It's known as the Jesus Payer, and there are a few versions of it, but my version is, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
Again, I did this against my religious upbringing, which as I said didn't believe in memorizing and reciting prayers, but required all prayers to be "from the heart," meaning spontaneous.
But I'm glad I violated my upbringing [by having memorized it] because I discovered that learning something by heart can save you when your heart is broken so nothing can come from it except tears,
and spontaneity is simply another burden on an already overburdened soul....
I am experiencing this memorized prayer even now, days later.
It feels like an engine running in my mind, as if the power went out and this prayer is the generator that's keeping me going.
p. 196-198
Finding Our Way Again, Brian McClaren
2008, Thomas Nelson Publishers
