God knows

Fr Stephen has put up some excellent and short posts about prayer on his blog, which I recommend to everyone who visits mine. Right at the beginning of his latest post, he has a short story, possibly from the Desert Fathers, which really rang true. For me, it's emblematic of what my experience of Orthodox Christianity has been: down to earth, both feet on the ground, honest before God and man.

A brother asked a hermit, “If I oversleep and miss the time for prayer, I hesitate to keep the rule of prayer. I am embarassed and do not want the brothers to hear me praying.”

The hermit gave him this advice: “If you sleep late, get up and shut your door and windows. Then pray your psalms. Both day and night belong to God. You will glorify God whatever time it is.”

“You will glorify God whatever time it is.”
This sounds like the kind of thing we're used to hearing from basic bible-believing folks—evangelicals some of them are called—people who don't put much store in ceremony of time and place but think you can worship God in a room that's a church on Sunday and a basketball court the other six days of the week. Yet here it is, an Orthodox saying, an expression of the faith of the fathers.

Where does this idea originate? I mean, the idea that prayer is prayer, even if you "miss church" on occasion. Even the ideas that prayer (and yes, even worship) can "happen" to us anywhere?

Well, what has been handed over to me, is that this idea is found in the Bible, in many places, but especially in Psalm 139.

Yahweh, you examine me and know me,
you know if I am standing or sitting,
you read my thoughts from far away,
whether I walk or lie down, you are watching,
you know every detail of my conduct.

The word is not even on my tongue,
Yahweh, before you know all about it;
close behind and close in front you fence me round.
shielding me with your hand.

Such knowledge is beyond my understanding,
a height to which my mind cannot attain.
Where could I go to escape your Spirit?
Where could I flee from your presence?

If I climb the heavens, you are there,
there too, if I lie in Sheol.
If I flew to the point of sunrise,
or westward across the sea,
your hand would still be guiding me,
your right hand holding me.

If I asked darkness to cover me,
and light to become night about me,
that darkness would not be dark to you,
night would be as light as day.

It was you
who created my inmost self,
and put me together in my mother's womb;
for all these mysteries I thank you:
for the wonder of myself, for the wonder of your works.

You know me through and through,
from having watched my bones take shape
when I was being formed in secret,
knitted together in the limbo of the womb.

You had scrutinized my every action,
all were recorded in your book,
my days listed and determined,
even before the first of them occurred.

God,
how hard it is to grasp your thoughts!
How impossible to count them!
I could no more count them than I could the sand,
and suppose I could, you would still be with me.

What a great God we serve! What a loving God, who knows everything about us, so much so, that He is ready to forgive us our failings before we fall, and when we do, how eager He is to restore us in our own eyes to worthiness in His! I have little more to add to what Fr Stephen wrote, and even less to add to what the Word of God teaches in its pages, only to say, especially of the Bible:
“Take up and read!”

Fr Stephen's posts can be read by clicking the links below:
The Experience of Prayer
The Time for Prayer