Wordless Prayer

All noise all the time. Noise is more portable than ever before, and becomes more so every day. Thanks to a never-ending parade of gadgets, we never have to be left out of the noise-stream. Yet, it is in silence and solitude that we learn to synchronize our hearts with His. The very silence that has become so elusive in our world is the essential element for you who want to move from “saying prayers” to living in an abandoned intimacy with the One for whom your heart is made. Richard Foster says, “Contemplative Prayer immerses us into the silence of God. How desperately we in the modern world need this wordless baptism” (Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home).

The reason for my wordlessness is so that He can breathe His words into my thoughts. His desires become the mold in which my desires are shaped. I wait quietly in His presence so that He can speak order and form and truth into the chaos of my frenetic life. I come to Him without words for no reason other than to be sculpted and chiseled by Him until, moment by moment, I begin to look more like Him. I have no agenda except to rest in His embrace, to let Him do the grace-work in me while I savor His nearness. Out of my wordlessness, words come. But they are words whose origins are in Him. He floods my silence with His living voice. (Jennifer Kennedy Dean. All rights reserved.)