Tag Archives: prayer

Lost in prayer

Posted on August 10, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Sometimes when I pray the words scurry by like ants I watch their silent progress unregistered on the kitchen scale undulating in their trail unnoticed until they become a swarm indistinguishable one from the next  Sometimes there is one you see that carries five thousand times its weight … Continue reading →

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Sleep, prayer, grief, and Jesus

Posted on April 10, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus knew that he would conquer death and sin – he had told them over and again that he would rise – but he was grieved and frightened and anguished at the capacity of his human captors for violence. There is no contradiction here: it was from ourselves that he came to save us. That is why he advises his disciples, “Pray that you may not be tested.”  Continue reading →

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How to grow a prayer life

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

We have been transplanted into a new and enduring reality. We know now that this new situation will last longer than any of us imagined at the beginning. If we are not to be choked up by the troubles or cares of the world, we need to take care of the soil of our souls, and the loam of our lives, if we are to continue as good mediums for God’s Word. Continue reading →

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A midweek prayer in the middle of the night

Posted on June 24, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

Flying dark with the bats, I send out prayers,
trying to locate God by their echoes. Continue reading →

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Pray as though nobody’s listening

Posted on March 11, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

Oh, but what about those things that “our Father who is in secret” will see? And what will be their just reward? What is behind that other door, the one within our hearts and souls, which attempts to guard my guilt and my ungraceful, unpaintable, distressed and unfading mantras even from the sight of God, let alone myself? Continue reading →

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On the need to pray, and not to lose heart

Posted on October 20, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

I pray so as not to lose that heart of God that keeps insisting that justice is possible, that mercy is reasonable, that resurrection is coming. I pray, not so that I can change anyone else’s mind, let alone God’s, but so that God, by her insistence and irritating persistence can change my own heart and mind, bringing them more in alignment with the will and word of God. I pray so as not to lose heart, to hear over and over and over again that widow’s word that God’s justice is eternal, preexisting, loaded with mercy, and final. Continue reading →

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prayer incarnate

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

How did you pray, body and breath, those wilderness days beneath stars that made promises, sand through your hands counting moments since creation, each grain an erosion of the whole; how did you pray, body and spirit sticky with honey … Continue reading →

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Undertow

Posted on May 2, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

I went to the water filled with chaos, foaming with worry, frothy with fear; I went to the water cold as winter, opaque as oil. I went to the water to see your Spirit spraying the rocks with invisible ink, animation drawn out of … Continue reading →

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A prayer for the anxious preacher

Posted on March 30, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Faint stigmata of fingernails in palm-flesh, the careful unclenching of the jaw do not show, but You know, Anointed with anxiety in the Garden. If I lay end to end the moments I have spent, keys in hand, chanting, “okay, … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Made to Move, by Wendy LeBolt

Posted on March 28, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Have you ever heard of a Kinesthetic Christian? Neither had I, until Wendy LeBolt sent me a copy of her book to review. Made to Move: Knowing and Loving God Through Our Bodies is LeBolt’s guide to loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength – without making half of them metaphorical. Continue reading →

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