Attitude and Action 2

C. S. Lewis, writing to an American friend, said this about reflective exercises: “We all go through periods of dryness in our prayers, don’t we? I doubt…whether they are necessarily a bad symptom. I sometimes suspect that what we feel to be our best prayers are really our worst; that what we are enjoying is the satisfaction of apparent success, as in executing a dance or reciting a poem. Do our prayers sometimes go wrong because we insist on trying to talk to God when He wants to talk with us. Joy tells me that once, years ago, she was haunted one morning by a feeling that God wanted something of her, a persistent pressure like the nag of a neglected duty. And till mid-morning she kept on wondering what it was. But the moment she stopped worrying, the answer came through as plain as a spoken voice. It was, “I don’t want you to do anything. I want to give you something”; and immediately her heart was peace and delight. St. Augustine says, ‘God gives where He finds empty hands.’ A man whose hands are full of parcels can’t receive a gift. Perhaps these parcels are not always sins or earthly cares, but sometimes our own fussy attempts to worship Him in our way. Incidentally, what most often interrupts my own prayers is not great distractions but tiny ones—things one will have to do or avoid in the course of the next hour."
What great words reminding us that God speaks to us. When we listen the message of God can enter our hearts. We absorb the verse or the story of scripture, and it affects us, touches us, changes us. But we cannot come to God with a selfish attitude. In fact, we cannot come to God with any attitude at all. We need to humble ourselves before God if we want to receive anything from God.
How can God challenge you in regards to your attitude this Lenten season? Give yourself over to God, and receive all that God has for you, then you will act the way God desires You to act; the way God created you to act!