Like any relationship, our
friendship with the Lord, expressed in prayer, goes through different stages
and seasons. So there are times when prayer comes without effort and flows with
ease. We experience the Lord’s closeness and receive helpful insights when we
pray.
These times of sweetness and light cannot be permanent.
At other times, we can
experience a sense of dryness and boredom when we come to pray. Our enthusiasm
for prayer wanes. The Lord can seem a thousand miles away behind a brick wall.
We may feel forgotten by Jesus and wonder why we bother.
But these are the very times
when our love is being matured and deepened. We are moving beyond just what we
can get out of prayer to really wanting to be united with the Lord and his will
for our lives.
Fidelity and perseverance in
prayer at this stage are vital. It may seem to us that nothing is happening,
but the Spirit is working in a hidden manner and with intense love within our
souls – far below the level of thought and feelings. What we experience as
absence and darkness is the presence of the Lord given to us in a new and more
profound manner.
In time, and with faithfulness, there comes a gradual
re-awakening of the heart – a greater conviction of how unquenchable is the
Lord’s love, and a fuller awareness of all the ways he is present to us.
Our growth in prayer is
measured not by experiences and warm feelings, but by fidelity and by an
increasing gift of ourselves in love to the Lord and to others.
Whatever the season of the
heart, we are asked to remain faithful to prayer.
