"Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them."
There is an interesting thought I came across from a book a dear friend gave me for Christmas. It is entitled "Markings" by Dag Hammarskjold a swedish economist, statesman who received the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously.
How often have we mistaken our cravings for being worthy of prayer. How often have we classified them as such, thinking solely about ourselves.
How often have we chosen to live on the level of superficial desires rather than pushing them aside and choosing to go much deeper.
What would happen in our lives if we began to filter out our selfish cravings from those desires and thoughts that truly belong to all that is noble in our human reality?
We need to create a filter so that when we go to pray, when we bow low before God it isn't the weight of those cravings that weigh us down and bring us to our knees but the weight of glory, seeking God's glory that brings us to our knees, for is this not what prayer is about.
Perhaps then we would begin to experience in real time the attitude of the psalmist who invites us to cry out with joy.
Maybe then what the early church experienced we too would begin to experience, "there was great joy in the city."
It is a known reality that the greatest enemy to joy is selfishness. When our world revolves around us the laughter and joy we are made for is slowly crushed by the gravity of our lives and the decisions we make for self-preservation.
But when God becomes the gravity of our lives, the unbearable lightness of being begins to set us on a world wind of joyfulness that culminates in our a cry of jubilation.
As we look to the first reading, the circumstances of the joy that was experienced is a result of persecution. A strange reality where living for another becomes the path of true joy regardless of the circumstances that abound.
"Shout joyfully to God, all the earth, sing praise t the glory of his name; prelim his glorious praise. Say to God, "How tremendous are your deeds."
Cry out with joy and do not let the circumstances of life interfere with the deep abiding reality of God's presence.
Remember not every human craving is fit for prayer, but prayer will make our every craving fit glory.
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