praying the scriptures

a letter from a friend arrived yesterday with a very useful problem. ryan knight is a campus minister at a large state school. he is thinking of introducing praying the scripture to his students, but they are already having trouble understanding praying the psalms. so i thought about this as i walked out to the county's highest ridge, with a view of the kings river.

i had recently sent him one very practical book on the subject, which i did not yet know he had not read. oh well. but i thought, another book is probably not going to be much help anyway.

and it dawned on me that praying scripture is really very simple:
think about someone you love very much.
imagine that person in serious trouble.
think of yourself praying for that person.
think how you would want the holy one to listen to your prayer.
read scripture listening that way.

we are the ones whom god loves very much.
we are in serious trouble, and not for our sins only, but for the sin of the world.
the holy one speaks to us in scripture.
our listening is praying the scripture.

the next problem ryan came up with is that many of his students are still in denial that they are in serious trouble. but that is why so much of the scripture is stories. they catch us up in ways we aren't expecting. but that's perhaps the subject of another post.