The Year of Living Biblically (Month 2/Chapter 2)

A few things happen as AJ Jacobs continues his journey into month 2 of a "living Biblically" year. He begins to learn to blow a shofar (funny to me for two reasons, my dad owns his own shofar and the popularity of a fairly awful series of Christian romance fiction which features "And The Shofar Blew" as one of its titles). He deals with the rather awkward (but exceedingly humorous) experience of avoiding his "unclean" wife during her period. He begins a Most-Violated list of laws he has broken (lying, vanity, gossip, coveting, anger...) that makes me, once again, keenly aware of how little attention I oay to my own sin. He visits a creationist museum and treats it with a respect that I found disarming (I was with his Christian friend who told him, "those people give Christianity a bad name.")

But the most memorable and moving part of the second chapter are AJ's initial attempts at prayer. Once again, for someone who doesn't come at this from a background of faith, Jacobs approaches the act of prayer with respect and even reverence. Hesitant to go out on his own, he borrows prayers from the Biblical text (not a bad practice for those of us who have been at this for awhile). By strange happenstance, AJ grabs ahold of one of my favorite prayers in the Bible:

O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you,
my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land which has no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.

Where Jacobs struggles is with sensing the presence of God. He struggles with distractions. He struggles with frustration and boredom. He wonders why the God who wrestles with Jacob doesn't make Himself a bit more obvious.

And, once again, he speaks to struggles and frustrations that I have as a person of faith. I often wonder why God doesn't seem to answer my prayers in clear and dramatic ways. I often feel like I am just talking to myself when I pray. I have had times when my prayers for guidance were answered in immediate and life changing ways, but this just causes me to wonder why they aren't always answered that way.

On a personal note, unrelated to the book, I have found it helpful to discover, just this past year, how important it is to remember that prayer is less about trying to get God to pay attention to us, and more about us paying attention to Him.

Still, I am curious about the experiences of people of various faiths and of no faith and what your experience with prayer has been. Which brings us to discussion part two.