M&S Lenten Calendar 2014
March 5: Pray for strength for the journey of deepening faith and spiritual growth
March 6: Offer a prayer of thanks for those in your life who have been examples of faithful believers
March 7: Pray for your family and give thanks for other encouragers in your life.
March 8: Offer a prayer of thanks for God’s gift of the presence of the spirit in your life.
March 9: Pray for all those who live with spiritual hunger.
March 10: Pray for strength for someone facing a challenge.
March 11: Pray that you will put trust in God during a challenge you face.
March 12: Pray in a place that is special to you.
March 13: Pray for our leaders in the world.
March 14: Pray for those who search for justice.
March 15: Offer a prayer of thanks for spiritual comfort which God offers to all.
March 16: Pray for all those who serve the church.
March 17: Pray while walking in silence.
March 18: Pray for forgiveness for a failing of yours.
March 19: Sing a prayer today.
March 20: Pray that your decisions will be guided by the spirit.
March 21: Pray that your actions will reflect a Christian spirit.
March 22: Offer a prayer of thanks for the season.
March 23: Let the Holy Spirit guide you as you pray today.
March 24: Pray that the spirit will open your heart.
March 25: Pray that you can generously forgive others or yourself.
March 26: Pray in a new way or place or at a different time of day.
March 27: Pray for deepened trust in God and in the spirit of others.
March 28: Pray for laughter and joy in your life.
March 29: Pray that a conflict you feel will end with peace in your life.
March 30: Pray for those who face discrimination.
March 31: Pray that you will smile at everyone you meet.
April 1: Pray that today you can share the Good News.
April 2: Pray as a group or in the company of others.
April 3: Pray for deepened understanding of Christ’s message.
April 4: Pray for all who struggle with their faith.
April 5: Pray that God will walk with you.
April 6: Pray for “the luck of the Irish” in your life.
April 7: Pray for true joy in sharing the love of God.
April 8: Pray that you will see the beauty around you.
April 9: Pray in the morning and when the sun goes down.
April 10: Pray for our planet and all of God’s creation.
April 11: Pray for those in Canada who lack safe drinking water.
April 12: Pray for The United Church of Canada and its world mission.
April 13: Palm Sunday –pray for those living in the Holy Land.
April 14: Pray for our Mission partners around the world.
April 15: Pray for the children who live in poverty.
April 16: Pray five times today.
April 17: Maundy Thursday–Pray for your faith community.
April 18: Good Friday–Pray that you will meet faith challenges.
April 19: Pray for faith in yourself and those you love.
The reason you'll drive your guardian angels crazy is because your guardian angels know how your brain actually works and they know you'll feel incredibly frustrated if you pray in a way that confuses and stymies your biological brain. Relationship with God depends on your ability to process incoming information from God and your angels, so effective spiritual practices are those that work with your brain instead of against it. Keep it simple, keep it sane!
With prayer, as with all spiritual practices, there's the easy way and there's the hard way. Your angels are very keen on the easy way (since being an angel-in-human-form is hard enough on the best of days). The prayer calendar above is the hard way.
This is how the above calendar looks to your angels:
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| How Prayer Practices Look to Your Angels: When you use 46 different prayers over the Lenten period, your biological brain sees it as 46 different maps (instead of a single, unified map!). After a while, your brain stops paying attention to the prayers because there's no consistency to them and therefore no chance of building strong inter-neuronal connections. On the other hand, your brain will pay attention to one clearly written prayer repeated earnestly each day for a minimum of 6 weeks. (Six weeks is the minimum amount of time it takes the brain to build a new neuron -- and building neurons and inter-neuronal connections is the key to long-term learning and change!) |
When you use 46 different prayers over the Lenten period, your
biological brain sees it as 46 different maps (instead of a single,
unified map!). After a while, your brain stops paying attention to the
prayers because there's no consistency to them and therefore no chance
of building strong inter-neuronal connections. On the other hand, your
brain will pay close attention to one clearly written prayer repeated
earnestly each day for a minimum of 6 weeks. (Six weeks is the minimum
amount of time it takes the brain to build a new neuron -- and building
neurons and inter-neuronal connections is the key to long-term learning
and change!)
Next year, why not try to easy way? Pick one prayer, reflect on it in the morning and and again in the evening, and try to find small messages, synchronicities, or reminders during the course of your everyday life that relate to the one prayer you've chosen. You'll be surprised at what you notice when you're only asking your brain to follow one map at a time. It doesn't mean you're being spiritually lazy -- it means you're respecting God's wishes for you!
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