Archives For Life

How to Improve Your Prayer Life in Five Minutes or Less

February 14, 2013 — 2 Comments

Can it really be that easy?  Well it all depends.  If you spend hours a day on your knees in some private chamber this post probably isn’t for you.  But if you struggle to find the time to pray and you just can’t make that devotion time regular, then yes!  It is that easy.

Here are five ways you can improve your prayer life almost immediately.

PrayerMedium1. Start Now

One of the biggest barriers to prayer is waiting for the epic spiritual experience to start.

But that’s like waiting for exercise to sound more enjoyable than devouring a Chicago-pan pizza.  Probably not going to happen any time soon.  And if it did it probably wouldn’t be the epic experience you were hoping for.  Heart attack.  Not so fun.

Time with God is enjoyable but like exercise it’s the afterwards kind of pleasure.   Of course many things are immediately more enjoyable than prayer? It’s only later we find them far less fulfilling than time spent with God.

So start now!  Don’t wait.  James  4:8 reminds, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

2. Make it Brief

If we aren’t waiting for the epic spiritual experience to kickstart our prayer life we’re probably trying to engineer one.  Haven’t prayed for a month; why not seclude yourself in that prayer closet over the next 24 hours?  I hear sweat lodges are nice.  Just kidding.

If you start with this kind of shock commitment you’re bound to crash and burn.   You’ve heard of crash dieting?  These unhealthy changes never produce the intended results.

Sure marathon running is an awesome goal and a great achievement but no one runs that far on their first day.  Or their fiftieth.  Or their hundredth.   The same goes for prayer.  Lengthy periods take practice and discipline.

You’ve heard it declared, “With God, it’s all or nothing.”  And Yes!  God requires some pretty extraordinary things.  But remember this is the same God who takes the least and makes it great (e.g. the loaves and fishes).  So start small.

3. Don’t Put it on a list

What about that gargantuan list?  You feel like you got to catch up.  They’re so many needs.  And it just keeps getting longer.

Enough with the list already!  Don’t put it on the list.  Pray right now!

There will always be things to pray for.  When someone asks you to pray or you offer to pray for someone, don’t put it on a list to weigh you down later on.  Pray then!  Pray now!

You don’t have to wait until the right time.  Now is the right time!  And by doing so you won’t find yourself the hypocrite, promising to pray and never quite finding the time.

4. Use Mindless Routine.  

Of course having a “prayer life” means you’re not just going to pray once.  So where are you going to find that regular time when life is so busy?

How many times a day do you find yourself doing something so routine that your mind just wanders?  Fill that time with prayer.  It may be a few seconds.  Perhaps a few minutes.  But don’t think it’s nothing.  Make it something. Spend it in prayer.

 5. Pray the “Canned” Prayer

Ok!  You don’t have the words to say.   You don’t sound as eloquent as Sister Sarah and you’re pretty sure you don’t know how to speak King James English.  That’s alright.  Silence is good.  But you could also recite a short prayer.

I know.  I know.  Quoted lines don’t seem authentic today.  Like canned laughter or applause.  But chances are you’re wedding vows were recited and that didn’t make them any less authentic.

Jesus taught his disciples to recite a prayer.  He said, “when you pray, pray this…”  And if it’s good enough for Jesus it’s good enough for me.

 

Our Father, who is in heaven

Your name be set apart

Your Kingdom Come

Your will be done

on Earth as it is in heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who have sinned against us.

And lead us not into temptation

but delivers us from the evil one.

Start praying.  Keep praying.  And little by little you’ll see your life grow in God.

In Devotions, Life
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Groundhog Day: When Nothing Matters

February 6, 2013 — Leave a comment

I love the movie Groundhog Day!  And not just because it’s the first movie my wife and I ever saw together.  This movie is funny as well as profound.

What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?

This isn’t just the question Bill Murray as the self-obsessed Phil Connors must ask.  It’s the question the filmmakers want us to ask ourselves. Who hasn’t felt like they were stuck repeating the same day over and over again?

  • stuck in a mortgage that’s underwater
  • stuck in an economy that won’t pay
  • stuck in a job that pays too much to leave.

Stuck. Stuck. Stuck.

As Ralph replies, “That about sums it up for me.”

So what’s the films answer?

After recovering from the initial confusion of finding himself the only person reliving the same day over and over again, The narcissistic Phil Connors is eventually transformed by his unexplained set of circumstances.

Warning: Spoiler Alert

Freedom from Consequence

Phil at first finds in this repeated day the freedom to indulge himself.  Immune from any lasting consequences, He does what he’s always wanted.

  • He drives recklessly
  • punches an annoying salesman
  • stuffs himself with junk food
  • smokes
  • robs a bank
  • manipulates a woman for sex

But what Phil Connors really wants is Rita, his coworker and producer.  He spends countless days using his power to get her into bed.

But Rita won’t budge.

No amount of manipulation will make Rita go all the way.

Prison of Emptiness

Downcast by Rita’s continued rejection, Phil begins to feel the loneliness and ultimate meaninglessness of his situation. The day has become a prison. What good is an eternity without judgement when it produces no lasting results?

Phil somehow gets it into his head that he won’t be free until the groundhog ceases to see his shadow.

He steals the groundhog and leads police and town leaders on a high speed chase.  Stuck between a literal rock and hard place, a quarry and a cliff, Phil drives himself off the cliff, killing himself and presumably the groundhog as well.

But death is no release for Phil. He’s resurrected the next morning to once again relive the same day.

Phil isn’t through though.  He feels he must die.  He

  • drops a toaster in a bathtub
  • steps out in front a bus.
  • leaps from a church steeple

And still the day goes on.

An End to Self

At last he confesses to Rita.

“I’m a god.”  He says matter-of-factly.

“You’re not God.” Rita says.

This isn’t a belief Phil’s simply derives from his unique situation.  It’s the faith he’s had from well before he ever set foot in Punxsutawney.

Phil thinks he’s greater than everyone else.  He thinks only of himself.

But when he gets Rita to in part “believe in him,” he’s taken back.  “Maybe it really is happening.  I mean how else could you know so much?” Phil replies, “there is no other way.  I’m not that smart.”

Rita determines to stay with him for the day.

Later that night, the two sit on his bed tossing cards into a hat.  Rita asks, “Is this what you do with eternity?” But Phil finds something more hollow in the way he spends his days.

Phil: The worst part is that tomorrow you will have forgotten all about this and you’ll treat me like a jerk again.

Rita: You’re not.

Phil: It’s all right.  I am a jerk.  It doesn’t make any difference.  I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t even exist anymore.

Though admitting he’s a jerk is important the final line is just as telling.  We don’t typically speak of our existence rather we speak of God’s.

As the night wears on Phil reads the line “Only God can make a tree” from “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer.

Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.

Through Rita’s friendship, Phil has begun to doubt his deity.

As she sleeps, he whispers to her his prayer of confession and repentance.

I’ve never seen anyone that’s nicer to people than you are.  The first time I saw you something happened to me.  I never told you, but I knew that I wanted to hold you as hard as I could.  I don’t deserve someone like you.  But if I ever could I swear I would love you for the rest of my life.

I don’t believe its coincidence that Rita’s name comes from both the Latin and Greek word for “pearl.”  She is the “Pearl of Great Price” for which Phil must relinquish everything.

The New Man

Phil wakes up the next morning a new man.  The significance of the radio’s repeated song “I’ve Got You Babe” is at last revealed.  Though he once was all alone, obsessed with himself, Phil’s now has Rita.  And it makes all the difference in his world.

  • He gives all his cash to the homeless man he’s ignored.
  • He serves his coworkers
  • reads books
  • Takes up piano and ice-sculpting
  • greets people with a smile and a warm embrace

But there’s still a little of the old Phil that has yet to die.

Late one night he finds the homeless man shivering in a back alley.  Phil takes him to the hospital where the man suddenly dies.  The new Phil is upset but like the old Phil think’s he has control.  Despite doing everything in his power, however, day after day, the man still dies.

As Phil performs CPR on the man one last time, we hear the man exhale and the breath leave the body.  The dead man’s spirit is surrendered to God.   And so is Phil.   At last he looks away from himself up towards heaven.

And with that the cycle of days is broken. The last Groundhog day Phil experiences in Punxsutawney is way he was always met to experience it.  Free of self.

The Answer

The fact that Phil is covering a groundhog also named Phil is clearly intentional.  The Groundhog is a symbol for Phil himself.

Legend has it that if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on Feb. 2, winter will last six more weeks but if doesn’t spring will come early.

I always thought it strange that the legend said the shadow indicated a continuation of winter.  Perhaps its just my Washington state bias but clouds have always represented winter while sun the summer.

So why would the clouds and not sun represent the end to winter?  Phil had it right.  It’ not the clouds or the sun its the fixation upon the shadow.  The shadow of self.

Only by looking away from ourselves to God and others will will we find true freedom and an end to the cycle of empty and meaningless days.

In Culture, Film, Life
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If Time Is Speeding up How Much Time Do We Have Left?

January 30, 2013 — 1 Comment

“It’s going to go fast,” my dad said to me on the eve of my high school graduation.  And like a typical teenager I didn’t believe him. How could I?  Judging by the experience of my first 18 years, I expected the next 18 to feel just as long.  There was plenty of time to waste.

But of course he was right and I was wrong.

I’ve found that the second half of my life has been no where near the length of the first.  And now I expect the next 18 years to pass quicker still.  At some point we each begin to feel that time is speeding up with age.

The question I now have is just how fast my life is going to pass?  How much time or more accurately the feeling of time do you and I have left?  If the theory of time speed-up discussed in my last two posts (here and here) is at all correct the answer is a jaw-dropping less than we want to think.

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Why We Feel Time is Speeding Up

There are a number of good explanations for why time feels to be speeding up with age.  But the most objective and therefore measurable is found in the ratio of time to life.

As a percentage of our life, each new moment is less than the one before.  For instance a year when we were 1 was the whole of our life but at 2 it was half, 3 a third and so on.

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But unlike what the multiple charts above might suggest we don’t equally rearrange every passed moment to accommodate for the new.   Newer moments are simply compressed to a greater degree.  Like a car shortening the intervals between the lines on the road, this increasing compression is what gives us the perception of time’s acceleration.

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See my post Why We Feel Time is Speeding Up for more.

Time Speed Up Over a Lifetime

A pie chart of this change over 99 years and overlaid by the familiar marks of the clock shows us how the transformation applies directly to our lives.

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You would think an 18 year old who’s guaranteed to live to the ripe old age of 99 would have great deal of time left to live.  But not when adjusted for experience.   They have slightly less than 20 minutes left.  2/3 of their experience has passed between birth and the age of 18.

Again I’m not saying that time is literally speeding up.   The number of things you can accomplish during a day is always the same.  At the age of 60 you’ll still be able to brush your teeth in the same amount of time as you did when you when were 20.  And depending on the traffic it will still take you the same amount of time to drive to work.

It isn’t that the clock is speeding up.  It’s the declining proportion you feel in each new experience.

Look at the clock.  The same “5 minutes” of life is experienced in the

  • 4 years between 7 and 10
  • 6 years between 11 and 16
  • 10 years between 17 and 26.
  • 14 years between 27 and 40
  • 23 years between 41 and 63

It simply takes longer and longer to match the experience of youth.  And time is simply running out.

Where We Are On the Final Count Down

The 99 year old was over the hill at the age of 8.   The first 7 years of time experience was equal to the last 92.

Count the pieces and find where you’re at.  If you live to 99, how much time do you have left?.  Chances are you won’t like what you find.  But it’s good to number your days (Psalms 90:12).

When as a child I laughed and wept,

Time crept.

When as a youth I waxed more bold,

Time strolled.

When I became a full grown man,

Time RAN.

When older still I daily grew,

Time FLEW.

Soon I shall find, in passing on,

Time gone.

O Christ! wilt Thou have saved me then?

Amen.

Time Paces by Henry Twells

This post is the third in a three part series.

Part 1: Why We Feel Time Speeding Up With Age

Part 2: How to Compare Time Speed Up Between Ages

In Life
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How to Compare Time Speed Up Between Ages

January 24, 2013 — Leave a comment

Have you ever calculated how old you are in dog years? Or figured out what your age would be if you lived on Mars?

I know I have. Who hasn’t?

The formulas are simple enough. Humans live on average seven times longer than a dog so all you need to do is multiply your age by seven. And since Mars takes about twice the number of days to rotate around the sun all you you need to do is divide your age by two.

But have you ever figured out the difference in the feeling of time between the older and younger you?

We all have this sense that time is speeding up as we get older. I was reminded of this recently when the prospect of a 45 minute car trip brought my son to tears. 45 minutes of course doesn’t feel long to me NOW but I remember how it once felt substantially longer.

So how does 45 minutes at the age of eight compare to my experience at the age of thirty-five or perhaps more importantly what will 45 minutes feel like to me when I’m eighty?

In this post I want to show how you can simply and accurately compare your experience of time with those of a different age.

Arrepentirse

Why We Feel Time is Speeding Up

While there are a number of reasonable explanations for why time feels to be accelerating there’s only one that is any sense measurable.

Time speed-up is not entirely subjective. The feeling is a result of adding moments to our lives. Just as printing more money devalues the dollar so adding new experiences decreases the feeling of time. Each moment, as a ratio of your life, is literally becoming less than the one before. See my post Why We Feel Time is Speeding Up for more on this.

This rate of change is the same for every one. And because it’s the same, it’s possible to compare the feeling of speed between any two ages. Here’s how.

Comparing the Older Person to the Younger

So you want to know what 45 minutes at the age of 8 feels like to 35 year old or what 45 minutes at the age of 35 feels like to an 80 year old.

Use this formula when you want to know what the younger person experience would feel like to the older person.

  1. Divid the older persons age by the younger persons age.
  2. Multiply the given period of time by the answer to step 1

The equation looks like this: Time(Older Persons Age / Younger Persons Age).

What does 45 minutes at the age of 8 feel like to a 35 year old?

Answer:45 x (35/8) = A 35 year old would need to wait 197 minutes to experience what 45 minutes feels like to an 8 year old.

What does 45 minutes at the age of 35 feels like to an 80 year old? Answer: 45 x (80/35) = An 80 year old would need to wait 102 minutes to experience what 45 minutes feels like to a 35 year old.

Comparing the Younger Person to the Older

Now you want to know the reverse. What does the older persons experience of time feel like to the younger person.

  1. Divide the older persons age by the younger persons age.
  2. Divide the period of time by the answer to step 1.

The equation looks like this: Time / (Older Persons Age / Younger Persons Age).

What does 45 minutes at the age of 35 feels like to an 8 year old. 45 / (35/8) = Answer: An 8 year old would need to wait for 10 minutes to experience what 45 minutes feels like to a 35 year old.

What does 45 minutes at the age of 80 feels like to a 35 year old. 45 / (80/35) = Answer: A 35 year old would need to wait 20 minutes to experience what 45 minutes feels like to 80 year old.

Further Reflections

It’s interesting and fun to compare our experience of time with others. What’s not so fun, however, is finding out how much experience you might have left. I’ll tackle what this theory says about our future in my next post If Time is Speeding Up How Much Time Do We Have Left

In Life
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Why We Feel Time Speeding up with Age

January 21, 2013 — Leave a comment

A few days ago my family and I loaded into our minivan for a dinner out at a nice restaurant.  And my son like a typical eight year old asked how long the drive.  When I told him, he cried, “45 MINUTES! THAT”S GOING TO TAKE FOREVER!”

Forever?

45 minutes doesn’t feel all that long to me.  But of course when I look back I can remember a moment feeling like an eternity.  Time seemed to move slower when I was eight just as it feels to be moving more quickly now that I’m thirty-five.

Have you ever wondered why that is?  Why time feels like it’s speeding up?

There are a number of reasonable explanations for this apparently universal feeling.  But one theory is more objective than the rest.

Explanation #1: Time Flies with Fun

You’ve experienced how time flies when you’re having fun, right?  And drags when you’re feeling board.  It could be that as we age our experiences only get more engaging.  When we’re young we spend most of our time doing things others want.  But as we get older we find more freedom to do what we want.  Thus as fun replaces boredom we feel time speeding up.

Explanation #2: Routine Gaps in our Memory

But the reverse might also be true.  We remember new and fresh experiences more often than those that are monotonous and routine.  But monotony and routine characterize much of adult life. The result is that when we look back over our life we find memories tightly packed in the freshness of our earlier years but thinning as we grow older.  And so like a person who sleeps more and more each day, the decline in the number of  our memories causes us to feel that the days are simply going by faster.

Explanation #3: Inflating Experience

The subjectivity offered in these first two theories certainly play a role in our perception of time’s speed but there’s another more objective way to account for this universal phenomenon.

>It’s a mathematical fact that as a ratio of our life , each moment is becoming less than the one before.  Just as printing money eats away at the purchasing power of a dollar so each new moment eats away at the perceived value of time.

Think about it.  A year to a one year old is the whole of their life.  But at the age of two it’s half.  At three its a third. Four, a quarter.  And so on.

Screen Shot 2013 01 18 at 7 43 29 AM

Our experience of each new moment is like continually squeezing more slices into an already whole pie.  With each additional slice all the pieces must get smaller. Everything gets smooshed. The distance between the slices grows shorter.  And like a car shortening the intervals between the lines on the road, we feel time accelerating.

But thankfully as you can see the rate of decrease isn’t constant.  It’s exponential.  While we feel time is speeding up it’s no where near the acceleration a child experiences. In fact all our lives the rate at which we feel time speeding up is itself slowing down.  Though we feel time speeding up it doesn’t feel like it’s speeding up quite as fast.

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Besides offering an objective view of our experience, the inflation explanation provides a number of other useful benefits.

In my next post, How to Compare Time Speed Up Between Ages, I will show you how you can objectively compare your experience of time with those older and younger.   The next time you hear a child wine, “45 minutes!” you’ll know exactly how long that experience of time would feel to you.

Question:  Which explanation of time speed-up do you prefer?  Do you have an another alternative explanation? 

In Life
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