Often when we sit down to meditate on God’s word or contemplate the divine mysteries of God, we get distracted by our wandering thoughts.
We may even be experiencing a deep state of meditation, and then our thoughts wander and we find ourselves thinking about the grocery store, or a video we saw on YouTube.
While it is nearly impossible to eliminate all distractions, one thing we can do is ask God for help to keep focused during prayer.
Here is a short prayer adapted from the Family Prayer Book that asks God to stop our wandering thoughts and direct them back to him.
O Lord, lift up our hearts with the spirit of devotion. Teach us how to prepare our minds for our time of prayer and meditation. Stop the fancies of our wandering hearts, the thoughts of our preoccupied heads, and quell the power of our spiritual enemies who endeavor at such times to draw our minds from heaven by many vain imaginings. So enable us, with joy and thankfulness, to look on you as our deliverer from the evils we have escaped, and as the giver of all the good we have received or can hope for. So teach us to see that you are our only good, and that all other things are but means ordained by you to make us fix our minds on you, to make us love you more and more, and by loving you to secure eternal happiness.O Jesus, take up all our thoughts here, that, turning away from all distractions, our souls may become worthy to behold you face to face, in your kingdom forever.
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Can distractions during prayer be a blessing in disguise?
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And today we celebrate...