Summer morning prayer

"But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." — Matthew 6:6

The mornings are getting longer and I have started getting up before I need to, which is not something I would have said at any other point in my life. But the light comes so early now that it finds me before the alarm does, and once the light has found you there is no sense pretending you are still asleep.

I sat at the table this morning with the Bible closed beside me and did not open it. Some mornings the prayer needs the words and some mornings the prayer does not, and this was a morning that did not. The coffee was hot and the kitchen window was open and there was a breeze that carried the smell of the garden and the road and something else that I think was honeysuckle from the fence line.

I prayed the way you pray when you are not asking for anything. Not thankful, exactly, or not only thankful. Something underneath thankful, something that does not have a word and does not need one. The morning was doing what it was supposed to do and I was in the middle of it and the Lord was in the middle of it and I did not need to explain anything to anyone, least of all to God, who already knew.

Biscuit was on the porch. I could hear him settle. He has a way of sighing when he lies down in the morning sun that sounds like a man who has been carrying something heavy and has finally set it down. I do not think dogs pray, but I think they do something close to it, which is to be entirely in the place they are without wishing they were somewhere else.

The coffee got cold. The prayer got done. I do not know when one ended and the other began.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.