Uncovering the Blessing of Fixed-Hour Prayer

What exactly is a Daily Office?  Why should we set a Morning Office Hour as a church body?

Reading online to find out more about Office Hours for the Church surfaced a blog post that explained how setting corporate fixed hours of prayer can spur growth both individually and corporately.  Here are some excerpts from Joan Huyser-Honig post at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship:

When Arthur Paul Boers was in college, his 17-year-old sister (and only sibling) died of leukemia. Boers was devastated.

“And—this was particularly frightening—I found myself unable to pray and wondered whether I was losing my faith. At times I had nothing to say to God or did not know how to voice my prayers.

“Then a friend showed me a Taize prayer book, which gave me words to pray. It helped me voice laments and encouraged me to put my situation in a wider context. Slowly I learned to pray again. I relied on that book for many years,” Boers says in his wonderful book The Rhythm of God’s Grace: Uncovering Morning and Evening Hours of Prayer.

The Mennonite pastor and professor has since met others who felt cut off from God during depression or other hard times. He recommends trying fixed-hour prayer because it’s based on the “’fixed language’ of Scriptures,” through which God has spoken for years and continues to speak.

Though many Christians are only now uncovering the ancient discipline of common prayer, Boers says it’s rooted in the Bible, ultimately enriches Sunday worship, and is easy to begin.

Back to our roots

Addressing God with the same words that others pray at the same time is a discipline with many names. No matter what you call it, this type of prayer dates back to God’s chosen people.

Common prayer fills a gap

Early Christians prayed the Lord’s Prayer three times a day. Medieval church bells called people to common prayer. But as priests, monks, and nuns added songs, readings, and responses to each office, fixed-hour prayer became something ordinary people couldn’t do.
“The importance of individual subjective prayer (what prayer does for me) has increased in everyone’s mind. But my experience as a pastor is that people don’t actually pray much on their own,” Boers says. Nor do many people’s spontaneous individual prayers relate to the church as a whole.

He explains that common daily prayer provides a link between private prayer and corporate worship.

Setting aside time each morning and evening to pray reminds us that all that we have, including our time, belongs to God. Presenting Sunday morning offerings embodies the same truth. Boers likes theologian Heather Murray Elkins’ pun, “altaring time,” because it captures the ideas of offering our time to God and being altered as that sacrifice sanctifies our experience of time.

Knowing that you’re praying the same psalms, canticles, and confessions as other Christians are—even if you’re separated by time, geography, or denominational idiosyncrasies—“can profoundly reverse unhealthy individualism in our prayer,” Boers says.

Praying the same Scriptures throughout the years may seem tedious. Eventually, though, the words sink in and we get better at receiving the challenge and insight of Bible readings and sermons in church.

Finally, because common prayer follows the same praise-listen-respond pattern as Sunday worship, it makes church services feel more in sync with the rest of life. It’s very different from experiencing your life as something distorted by other people’s priorities, punctuated here and there by a quick prayer or an hour in church. 

An easy start is best

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Praying the hours makes us available to God, who is everywhere and always attentive to us. Yet work schedules, family situations, and life stages interfere.

Boers advises starting regular prayer just once a day, either morning or evening. “It’s doable. You know what you’re doing. There’s a time limit,” he explains.

It’s great if you can gather with others at church, school, or work to observe a daily office. In fact, Boers has noticed that people who normally don’t dare pray out loud in groups feel free to recite from prayer books.

INSTEAD OF THINKING BIG, Redeemer wanted to start out tiny and pray the Divine Office Morning Hours just once a day through posting on this blog, twitter and facebook. The posts aren't much longer than 5 minutes so that seemed tiny enough to get us going.  Our hope is it will spur us on to keeping the Mid-day and Evening Vespers as well. We pray that it will center us on the scripture and see our stories woven into the much BIGGER story of His Kingdom Baby Steps.

Think of this as meeting friends to train for a 5K, or joining a Zumba class. It's easier to do something with other people meeting you there. Lets share with each how God is using it in our lives.  We will also share prayer requests for the Dalgo's as they are in Kenya.  We also want to know your prayer requests also and we will hopefully see God do something Big taking baby steps together.