Lately I have been studying the prayer habits of the Christian community through the ages. One practice that has really blessed me is praying the Psalms.
I have taken the structure of Psalter in the Common Book of Prayer and modified it to meet my needs. I work a swing shift, so I am not able to do both in morning and evening Psalms reading. So I turned the one-month cycle into a two-month cycle, by assigning each division to a new day. So day 1 evening reading becomes day 2 morning reading.
The next thing I needed was to simplify the Liturgy of the Hours for morning prayer into seven sections: Opening Prayers, Prayer for Forgiveness, Apostles’ Creed, Psalms, Intercessions, Closing Prayers, and Lectio Divina.
This has been an evolution in my prayer life, helping me stay consistent, scriptural, and inspired. You can catch the devotion and love of the Psalmist as you turn their words into your prayers.
There are adjustments that one has to make. Some Psalms are very vengeful and ask God to destroy the enemies. Here we can recontextualize these towards evil spirits and the devil. We can also think of Israel as the chosen people, which we now are. So there are adjustments that can be made as we make these prayers our own.
