When I am full of myself, I have no room for others in my life. If I am too busy with my concerns, I cannot be concerned about others. Oh, sometimes I make a little room for others to come into my life but it is usually time of my own choosing or time I need to kill anyway.
Pain, sorrow and suffering have the effect of making me realize how empty my live can sometimes be. Sometimes these empty moments are of my own making. At other times, they are inflicted on me by others or the circumstances. But the emptiness that I experience creates a space for grace to come in.
Prayer time is a conscious effort to empty myself of ‘myself’ and my concerns. And in the free space I create and in the silence, God can find room in my life. Muscles do not grow nor become strong with just one day of exercise but through sustained and consistent efforts. The emptying through prayer to make room for God does not happen in one day but through sustained and consistent spiritual exercises.
“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wine skins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wine skins.” Mark 2:18-22