The truth of our spiritual life is that we don’t know how to have a spiritual life. Speaking for myself, it seems that no matter how hard I try to live in constant prayer, praise, and worship of God, the rest of my life manages to get in the way and muck up the works. Bummer, right?
But perhaps that’s exactly why I can’t seem to get to that next plateau of the spiritual life. Because I’m trying too hard to do it on my own. Paul explicitly says in Romans 8 (today’s Daily Office reading) that “we do not know how pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
Ahhh. It’s as if my inner self just took a tall drink of water on a hot afternoon. There are things that I will not know how to pray for. My measly words just cannot possibly say all that I want to pray for. When oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at mind-numbing rates, I need to let the Spirit pray within me. When friends die, I need to let the Spirit pray within me. When I cannot pray because I do not know how, I need to let the Spirit pray within me.
Thanks be to God that we don’t have to do everything by ourselves.
the rev. jimmy abbott 