Mental Prayer Meditation Helps
Presence of God
Grace I Ask: Dear God, help me to see more clearly the malice of sin from its terrible effects in the world.
Mental Picture: One tragic scene after another... rows of white wooden crosses stretching as far as the eye can see...one war has ended with countless dead...a gaunt man with glazed eyes behind barbed wire fence of concentration camp...a weeping mother holding her children made fatherless by a reckless teen-age driver.
My Personal Application: Sin is an offense against God, but actually we, not God, are the ones sin hurts. Sin is easy but its price is high. Sin causes most of the heartbreak, privation, and agony in the world today. Sin produces the humiliations and setbacks of everyday living, the gross inequality of wealth, the devastation of war. Do I realize the suffering caused by my sins: How I hurt others by cheating, by cutting remarks; by taking or injuring what does not belong to me; by rebuking and disobeying lawful authority; by cold-shouldering others; by giving bad example? Beg God to help make this clear to me.
I Speak to God: Dear Lord, give me a realization of how sin hurts me and others...of how sin always has its consequences. Keep me mindful of my obligations to others... the duty of loving my neighbor in order to love you. Give me a loathing for sin; root it out of my heart and replace it with a burning love for you and all men.
Thought for Today: Dear God, help me think of and note more examples of the harm sin does, so that I may develop a keen consciousness of how evil it is.
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Adapted from Mental Prayer, Challenge to the Lay Apostle
by The Queen's Work,(© 1958)
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