More on Daily Prayer​

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The basic structure for a basic service of Morning Prayer is comprised of an opening and closing (related to the four gestures corresponding to the candle, bible, cross, and font), and then four fundamental sections:

• Praise

• Psalm

• Proclamation

• Prayer

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The center of a Morning Prayer service—where the weight of time and energy are placed, and thus where our theophanic expectation is focused—is here: on an honest and rich re-presentation of the world before God in communal prayer. We understand “prayer” in this context quite broadly, incorporating words, gestures, silence, music, art, etc. The proclamation of Scripture and other liturgical pieces fuel and shape that prayer. 

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Praise. Whenever God’s people gather to worship, praise is a fundamental activity. Praise names our joy and maps it to its true source: God. Praise also exercises our anti-idolatry muscles as we consider all that might ask or demand our allegiance and declare that it is God alone—and not the stock market or our families or anything else—who deserves our praise. Typically, praise could be offered in a song of any musical style. But praise could also be a spoken litany, or an extemporized prayer with a spoken or sung refrain; or a series of images projected onto a screen representing God’s actions or attributes that call for praise. 

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Psalm. The Psalms are the prayer-book of the people of God.  In this section of the service we make these prayers our own, speaking them in words, songs, actions, images, etc. Praying the psalms are like completing the compulsory exercises in a figure-skating event; they give us the basic ‘moves’ of the spiritual life. The Psalms teach us deep in our bones the fundamental moods and modes of prayer.

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There are a million variations of expression available to us. For instance, one might employ a simple sung refrain for the congregation, and have the rest of the psalm spoken in stanzas over a jazz backdrop that emotionally follows the contour of the text. Or one might identify a handful of physical actions for the congregation to use as the Psalm is read chorally. Or one might pray through a paraphrase of the Psalm itself – for example, consider these lines from a very well-known Psalm:

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The Lord is my mother; I shall not be in want.  She makes me lie down in fresh clean sheets and tucks me in and kisses me goodnight, and while I sleep she sorts everything out, ready for the morning. She makes me cups of tea and ginger cake when I get home from school, and shepherd’s pie for supper with plenty of fresh vegetables.  She leads me away from the TV to the kitchen table where we have space to talk without interruptions. She listens to even the smallest of my worries and helps me get things in perspective. She restores my soul.

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The Psalm for the day might take us deeper into our own experience of God in and for the world; or it might knock us off center and remind us of others for whom God cares. We might consider, for instance, how the words of a particular psalm are especially fitting as the prayer of someone outside our normal circles of contact (e.g. a Sudanese refugee), and pray the psalm on their behalf. The Psalm is not a Faberge egg to look at in wonder and distant respect. It’s an egg; make an omelet with it.

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It’s a good idea to focus your thinking by asking “What does this Psalm teach us about prayer?” It might teach many things. Pick one of those things, and introduce the Psalm in the service with words that make this plain.  So, for instance, imagine the Psalm is 139. Introduce it thus: “Today’s Psalm tells us that God is always near us, and knows us better than we know ourselves. Let’s pray this Psalm today with the sort of honesty that comes from intimacy.”  

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Proclamation. The Word is then proclaimed -- not as some insightful or devotional McNugget, something easily consumed in order to fuel personal piety. Instead, we tell a bit of God’s story, in order to get a God’s-eye view of the world the way it really is, to look through the lens of scripture at the world on whose behalf we pray. The primary purpose for the scripture reading for the day, then, is to give shape and coherence and language to the prayer that follows.  It is often helpful for students to compose a few words or sentences they think help the congregation to see through the text into prayer – and to speak these words not AFTER the text is presented, but BEFORE it is presented. This will guide the congregation to listen to the text with an ear towards prayer.  This also subverts the “sermonic” and privileged expectation we bring to words that come after the reading of scripture. 

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Prayer. The weight of the service falls here, as we focus on Prayer as the place where we re-present the world and its concerns to God, where God and God’s people speak to one another heart to heart.  As you consider the structure and content of the prayer, allow the structure and content of the primary scriptural text to be your guide. For instance, if the primary text is poetic in character, the prayer may employ the scripture’s dominant poetic images (a potter’s wheel, a shepherd, fruit, etc.). If the primary text is a narrative, the prayer may invite the congregation to imagine itself in the story (e.g. “Like the prodigal son, Lord, we…. And like the jealous older brother, Lord, we…”). If the primary text is epistolary, with two or three logical moves, the prayer may follow those moves.

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In addition, we might collect prayer requests earlier in the day or week and pray through them at this point in the service.  Or we might sing the Lord's Prayer in Arabic or Swahili to emphasize our connection with our sisters and brothers within the body of Christ from other lands. Or we might offer a bidding prayer with regular responses (e.g. "Lord, in your mercy/hear our prayer"). Or we might look through the daily newspaper and rip out stories, placing them at the foot of the cross or a Christ candle as our expression of Prayer. If a musical refrain helped to frame the Psalm, that refrain could be reprised in the prayer.