My Quiet Times, Tenth Week After Trinity, & Quotation of the Week

One of the most precious times of my day is when I sit at my desk with a lit candle before me to spend time with God in His Word. Christians approach their time with the Lord in many ways, and mine is a rather eclectic mix that I'd like to share with you.

First of all, I start and end my days with Quiet Time, and I also pause at noon. In the mornings and evenings, I pray through:

The Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie, the Morning Prayers and the Evening Prayers. This little book was written for WWII soldiers to take with them on the battlefields, with prayers for one month: thirty-one Morning and thirty-one Evening Prayers, plus prayers for Sunday Morning and Sunday Evening. The language is so beautiful and worshipful, and I can worship God in ways that would never have occurred to me through these prayers. The blank pages facing each page-long prayer are for writing our own needs and prayer requests. I've been praying from this book off and on for fifteen years, and I somehow always come back to it.

The One Year Book of Hymns. I use this resource in the mornings only; I used to pray it in the evenings, but I found that I was often praying two hymns since the next resource usually includes a hymn in Vesper Prayers. If I know the hymn for a certain day, I sing it (very much off-key; singing is not my strong suit!), and if I don't know it, I read and pray it as poetry. I love the accompanying devotional and Scripture verses on the page facing the hymn lyrics. Some of the hymns date back a thousand years or more while others are from the 20th century; it's a lovely collection that lifts my heart to worship each morning.

The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle. A friend who used to attend Alpine Anglican Church of the Blessed Trinity gave me these three volumes (Springtime, Summertime, and Autumn/Winter) about ten years ago, and I keep returning to them as they ground me in God's Word and in prayer three times each day. Set up in the format of weeks starting with Sunday (The Sunday closest to August 1, etc.), each week is united by a common collective prayer prayed on each day of the week at each of the three prayer times: Morning, Midday, and Vespers. This is the only resource I use at noon at which time I also pray the requests of ourselves, family, and friends via the Prayer Popper app on my mobile phone. Set up with several short Scripture readings (quite a few from the Psalms), I pray the Scriptures and prayers during my day. The Vespers (Evening) readings include a hymn which is why I use the Book of Hymns mentioned above at Morning Prayer only.

The Book of Common Prayer 2011 by Father Keith Acker; edited by Alice Acker and Susanne Barrett. Following the request of retired Bishop Richard Boyce, Father Acker of Alpine Anglican Church of the Blessed Trinity retranslated and rewrote the original Book of Common Prayer of the Early Reformation. Then Father Acker and his lovely wife, Alice, traveled up the hill to Pine Valley to work with me, and together we focused on revising and editing this modern Book of Common Prayer which uses the English Standard Version Bible; yes, Crossways was very kind in allowing us free rights to their Psalms and other Scriptures. Now in its second printing, this Book of Common Prayer theologically hearkens back to Thomas Cranmer's original Book of Common Prayer of 1547, but uses the language of modern English rather than the archaic and difficult-to-understand language of the Early Reformation.

I pray Morning Prayer, read the Morning Scripture verses (one reading from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament) from my ESV Bible app on my Kindle tablet as they are listed in the Lectionary (a schedule of Scripture which, if read morning and evening, will take us through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice each year), plus the Psalter which lays out all 150 Psalms into thirty Morning readings and thirty Evening readings, thus allowing us to pray all of the Psalms each month. The Collects (collective prayers) for each week are referenced back to Scripture verses, and ancient hymns and canticles are also included along with the great Creeds of the Faith. The sales for this Book of Common Prayer have been generated more by evangelicals eager for a touch of liturgy steeped in God's Word than by Anglicans themselves. I pray Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline (bedtime prayers) each day from this resource.

And speaking of the Book of Common Prayer 2011, here is the Collect for this week, the Tenth Sunday After Trinity:

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY

THE COLLECT:
LET your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your people; And, so that we may obtain our requests, assist us in asking only for those tings that are pleasing to you; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and rules with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. (References: Nehemiah 1.11; 1 Chronicles 1.11-12; 1 John 5.14)

THE READINGS:

1 Corinthians 12.1-11; Luke 19.41-47a; Psalm 55.1-8, 23; Psalm 137.1-6; Exodus 20.1-17

And as I try to update my Quotation of the Week every week, here is a new quotation I found last month that caught my eye, mind, and heart:

"You have made us for yourself, O God, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you."

~Saint Augustine

Wishing you all a blessed week in the love and grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,