Peace and Stillness

Today's devotion from Jan Johnson's book Enjoying the Presence of God focuses on weaving prayer into every day activities. For instance, I could say a short prayer for any person I am talking to in my head during the conversation. My first reaction was to think she's crazy. I am a motor mouth and a guy. More often than not I'm throwing words out there until I figure out what it is I'm trying to say. My filter can barely keep up with what I say and now I'm supposed to pray for people while we're talking! Then it dawned on me just how helpful this could be. A down fall of talking too much is I tend to interrupt when an idea comes into my head. Sometimes I feel like I'll burst if I don't get these ideas out. It really annoys my wife when she is interrupted. This is why praying while talking to other people is so important. I have to refocus my thoughts on God instead of whatever I thought was important in the moment. Saying a prayer for God puts God first instead of focusing on my thought. I have made more time to listen when I taught Disciple I and it was really neat. However, it's been too easy to slip back into just running my mouth. There is a stillness and focus that comes from this practice. I would very much like to have that focus again.

I know my son has nothing to do with this devotion, but I couldn't resist posting another picture of him.