One thing that I have become concerned about as I minister here in New York City is that people in the church at large spend a lot of time talking about prayer and very little engaged in the practice of  praying.  As I contemplate the overwhelming task of living as the community of the faithful in the world but not of the world it is clear to me that we must be a people of prayer.  On so many levels the church as a whole talks about and seeks ways to call people to prayer.  Every effort is not without its results and they should be applauded and encouraged.

Each week from the Atlantic District Office of the LCMS I receive a Stop, Drop and Pray alert.  Three or four mission needs are sent out to pastors and lay members who have committed to stop, drop what they are doing and offer up prayer for the needs that are sent out that week.  It is a good reminder to me to pray for the mission needs of the wider district.  From time to time I also receive request to pray from the district office when special needs arise; someone is sick, a family member has been taken home to meet the Lord, or a church body has a special request.  This too reminds me to pray for the greater church.  I also receive monthly prayer requests from Concerts of Prayer, the YMCA, and Redeemer’s Church Planting network.  These also remind me to pray for the wider body of Christ living and ministering in the Greater New York City area.  All of these are useful and helpful reminders to me to pray.  And I am grateful for them all.

Recently I have been reading some things that call the church back to the ancient idea of the Daily Office.  The word office comes from the Latin opus.  This same root word gives us the word offering.  The Daily Office is our daily offering of prayers to God.  They were set prayers that were to be offered throughout the day.  They were a way of keeping the day holy before God.  After the Reformation the mainline liturgical churches kept up the practice.  The Lutheran Service Book has five Daily Offices; Matins, Vespers, Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Compline—Prayer at the Close of the Day.  Yet this practive of saying the Daily Office is hardly practiced anywhere.

The Daily Office, if practiced, would enhance the life of the one involved in the practice in many ways.  The Daily Office provides a regular reading of the scriptures.  Reading the Bible as part of ones devotional life encourages one to be receptive to the message of God.

The Daily Office also creates an atmosphere of praise and reflection.  It encourages devotional meditation.  In our hectic lives coming aside at different points in the day to meditation purposefully on God would help u s to restore our communion with him.

Prayer is also a sacramental activity.  When we pray we do not pray alone, God is always present, and when we pray are prayers are join with all others who pray.  The whole church remembers God as we pray.

As we pray the Daily Office we see how all of creation shares in the ceaseless praise of our God.  In reality the Daily Office is the work of God.  We join our prayes with the prayers of Jesus that go before the Father and our praise on earth joins the present praise in heaven and we become part of the fullness of the praise of all creation.

The Daily Office consists of the praise of God in psalms, scripture readings and intercessory prayer.  These are things the church understands it should be about; Paul says, “without ceasing.”  How good would it be if the whole church engaged in practicing the Daily Office.  Though the prayers are said alone the fact that we shared the same format would help us to understand that in fact we never pray alone.             

I live around the cornor from a Mosque and a large number of churches.  The bells of the churches are silent.  They no longer ring calling the people of God to worship or to prayer.  But each morning at 6 am and at various times during the day the horn of the mosque is sounded call the Muslim worshipers to prayer.    Do they understand something that we have lost?

I don’t know if the idea of the Daily Office will have a wide appeal.  For the last number of generations the body of Christ, at least in the circles I have moved in, have learned to throw up prayers to God on the go.  It seemed to make sense in our fast paced society.  There is also the idea that if prayer is impromptu it is somehow more real and sincere.   Nothing could be farther from the truth.  We are a people with a history.  We should take the wisdom and the prayers of those who went before us and offer them up to God as we at the same time add our voices and our needs to the cries that go before the throne of God.

I think when it comes to prayer we become overwhelmed by the task.  Some have the gift of prayer and it seems second nature to them.  But most of us, though we want to and we know we should become overwhelmed by the task and the responsibility.  Maybe if we fell in line with the practices of the saints that went before us prayer, worship, devotion and meditation would as some point become second nature to us.