Want to hear something awesome? Lutheran author Ruth Meyer contacted me with a super neat 12-Minute Prayer Challenge!
The gist of it is that you commit (and practice!) praying 12 minutes every day for eight weeks. According to Ruth, research shows that 12 minutes of focused prayer over eight weeks can change the brain so much that it can be measured on a brain scan! Awesome!
We’re obviously not looking for more brain scans in our lives, 😉 but what a great opportunity to turn our focus to our prayer lives for a while.
It looks like eight weeks is two weeks longer than Lent. Interesting. So that length of time is close to Lent + pre-Lent for folks on the One Year Lectionary.
Eight weeks is an admittedly lengthy amount of time in our fast paces lives. Still, it’s less than a season of the year, and, let’s face it, we’re all in seasons of live that should cultivate prayer and awareness of our good and gracious God and Lord.
A quick google search suggests it takes 66 days to form a habit. That suggests that this 12-minute prayer challenge could continue your prayer discipline far beyond our initial goals. Sounds meet, right, and salutary to me! 🙂
Start any time, but I’m going to go ahead and encourage you to start today. Twelve minutes: you can do that. After all, even if you are unsure what to pray regarding yourself, there are so many people and places to pray for. In fact, here’s a link to the LCMS Pray For Us Calendar, since that can be an easy, super helpful place to start.
If you want a little help, Ruth is offering a daily theme and prayer to help us get started. You can find those posted to her website, Truth Notes. Here is the link to Day 1.
Meanwhile, I’ll remind you that Ruth Meyer has books at Amazon & CPH. 🙂
Blessed Cinco de Mayo! Happy reading, writing, and praying, folks!
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