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In my daily prayers, I have returned to using “Venite”, an amazing prayer book put together by Robert Benson, a writer friend from Nashville. Benson has managed to produce a remarkable book which includes daily offices (morning, noon, evening, compline) arranged in ways that make them very assessable to anyone desiring a more disciplined approach to daily prayer, all in one book (which he states was his goal. In fact he wrote the book for his own prayer discipline and much later decided to publish it).

The offices include Psalms, Canticles, and Collects for the day of the month and/or the church season. For readings he includes sayings of Jesus for each day of the month. It is simple to follow and quite lovely as well as practical.
The book may be out of print but I found my copy on Amazon. It’s simply named “Venite” as it is itself a call to prayer. I highly recommend it.

Using a book such as this allows us, just like saying Morning or Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (from which Benson draws much of his prayer rhythm), to join our own prayers with those of people all over the world. And I think now is a good time for us to do so. Praying changes us. Jesus knew this about us. It’s why Jesus told us two things about other people – first we should pray for our enemies. Praying for our friends was easy, he said, let’s expand that to include even those who do us harm. And he asked us to pray for, as we all called to love, our neighbors as ourselves. Then, doggone it, he went and expanded that too in the story of the Good Samaritan. So today, in light of the evil news we seem to be bombarded with each day, I have tried to expand my prayers as Jesus expects, as Jesus calls us to do.

It’s not easy. It does make a difference. I commend it all to you.

I will close with the final verse of Benson’s version of the Song of Zechariah:

In your tender compassion, the morning sun has risen upon us – to shine on us in our darkness, to guide our feet into the paths of peace.