The Habit of Practicing Solitude and Prayer
January 19, 2025
Of the habits of Jesus, solitude is perhaps the most elusive in our modern world of noise and busyness. Solitude draws us into the very place so many of our activities seem designed to help us escape. It can be an unsettling thing to be truly alone with God and without an agenda.
READ
Mark 1:35
In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.
REFLECT
1. If you watch your life carefully, do you live from the outside in or the inside out?
2. Is your life fed from the outside? or from within?
3. Do you live by what the world around you stimulates you with? Or do you live by the means of the depth and the richness within yourself?
4. When you sit with yourself alone, without a phone, a book, a tv, a tablet, without a pet, without something that needs to be done, without sounds, without something to look at, without any input from around you—is there anyone at home in you?
RESPOND
• Take a moment to be alone with God throughout your day. Put your hands on your knees, palms down.
• Think of the concerns you have at this moment.
• When a concern comes to mind, imagine laying it on a table, God’s table.
• When no more concerns come to mind, turn your hands palms up in a posture of choosing to give God your full attention.
• Say, “I am now with myself. And with you, God.”