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Day 168 or June the 17th. Any time's a good time.

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Our thoughts today come from Psalm 88 verse 1.

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Lord, you are the God who saves me. Day and night I cry out to you.

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And now the big picture surrounding this verse.

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Psalms 88 and 89 have unique authors.

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Both of them are Ezraites. One is called Heman and the other Ethan.

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Two men with these names are mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, as sons of Tamar, who is included in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel.

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No matter whether these are the same men or not, they are united by their themes of crying out to God in times of distress and affliction.

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These Psalms were probably included because of the way they cover this topic of turning to God when we are at our lowest.

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It is a common reason and underlines how gracious the response is from a Creator whose created people only turn to Him in times of trouble.

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And now today's action step.

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The pastor of a thriving church told me recently that if he didn't take his dog for a long walk each morning, his prayer time suffered.

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He said he found walking and praying were great joint exercises, and that praying whilst walking was so much easier and more effective than kneeling down and praying.

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I am so used to people telling me that they prefer morning or evening quiet times that this option took me a little by surprise.

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I wonder if Heman the Ezraite, who wrote this Psalm, had this active approach to prayer.

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All too often we have a prayer slot and a witnessing slot and a worship slot, but the older I get the more blurred the edges get.

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Jesus often went into the wilderness to pray and I have to admit I assumed he would have sat down somewhere to meditate and pray.

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But he could just as easily have walked around.

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I know a man who often prays in the shower.

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It's a great place to meditate, he insists.

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It isn't a matter of one method being better than another, but prayer should be a part of our life that permeates everything we do, not just our quiet time.