At the beginning each prayer period, offering yourself to the Lord.
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory,my understanding, and my entire will,all I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours;do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace,that is enough for me. Amen.
Or consider writing your own offering of yourself, your thoughts , desires and actions ( your head, heart and hands).
A. Ask God to show you your desire as you enter in reflecting upon you life: Example pray for the following graces: to be more aware of how God loves and has loved me; how He is and was near; to trust in God's personal care for me now and always. Or your own
B. Make a list of 10-12 formative experiences in your life (positive and negative).
C. Read slowly Psalm 139 and pray attentively using all of your faculties - faith and feelings - your interior senses, imagination, recall – as you pray with each section.
D. Ask God to show you where He was in those formative experiences.
Note: This exercise is repeated for each formative moment completing it over several prayer periods. Repetition maybe helpful, as well as jotting down notes to review later.
Psalm 139
LORD, you have probed me, you know me: you know when I sit and stand; a you understand my thoughts from afar. You sift through my travels and my rest; with all my ways you are familiar. Even before a word is on my tongue, LORD, you know it all. Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, far too lofty for me to reach. Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, there you are. If I take the wings of dawn and dwell beyond the sea, Even there your hand guides me, your right hand holds me fast. If I say, “Surely darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light” Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but one. You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works! My very self you know. My bones are not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth.* Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down;f my days were shaped, before one came to be. How precious to me are your designs, O God; how vast the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the sands; when I complete them, still you are with me.
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