“You and I today, in the 21st century, fall into the idea that time is something measured by a clock – when we get to work and when we end work, when we get up and when we go to bed. Or perhaps we measure time by when we eat – breakfast and lunch and dinner. We can too easily become ‘time-clock humans’ or even ‘meal-driven people’ by how our time is regulated. Is there another way? There is. That other way is to let the hours of prayer shape our days. The blessings of life that enter most deeply into our soul do not come by our finding more free time or more leisure. Those blessings enter the soul when we let soul rhythms, the sacred rhythms of prayer, shape the structure of our day.
“Jews at the time of Jesus measured time in a variety of ways – none of them by a clock. There were morning prayers and late afternoon prayers and evening prayers, each of which was tied somehow to the worship of the temple. Time was not rooted simply in the economic system or in meal routines but more fundamentally by the temple’s worship. Imagine a clock that did not day ‘3PM’ but ‘afternoon sacrifice.’
“Jesus came of age in a Judaism shaped by a three-times-a-day-we-all-stop-and-pray-together sacred rhythm. This sacred sense of time shaped Jesus, and it shaped how the early followers of Jesus learned to pray with Jesus and with the church. The so-called ‘hours’ of prayer were not one-or two-hour-long prayer marathons that wandered the globe in prayer requests while little children groaned the question, ‘How long before we are done?’ Nor were they times when Jewish males opened their scrolls of Torah, pulled out some Bible-study reference tools, and went to work on a passage of Scripture. No, these sacred hours of prayer were a designated ‘hour’ (such as 3 PM) set aside from the day for several minutes to recite together Israel’s richest treasures of prayer.”
-Praying With The Church, Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today – by Scot McKnight (p. 36-38)
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