Day 168 or June the 17th. Any time's a good time.
Our thoughts today come from Psalm 88 verse 1.
Lord, you are the God who saves me. Day and night I cry out to you.
And now the big picture surrounding this verse.
Psalms 88 and 89 have unique authors.
Both of them are Ezraites. One is called Heman and the other Ethan.
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.
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.
These Psalms were probably included because of the way they cover this topic of turning to God when we are at our lowest.
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.
And now today's action step.
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.
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.
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.
I wonder if Heman the Ezraite, who wrote this Psalm, had this active approach to prayer.
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.
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.
But he could just as easily have walked around.
I know a man who often prays in the shower.
It's a great place to meditate, he insists.
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.