A Spiritual Conundrum

"The Seven Storey Mountain" by Thomas Merton is just under five hundred pages long.  It is also a slow read.  I am reading it for the second time which is not unusual for the relationship I have with a good book.  Second reads are also normally slower journeys for me so it should be no surprise that I am still plodding along toward the page numbered four hundred.  On page 390 Merton raised a question which caused me to slow down even more.  The autobiography places him at a point after he has been greatly affected by being with a woman in ministry in Harlem and just before he enters the monastery.  He wrote, "I no longer needed to get something.  I needed to give something.  But here I was, day after day, feeling more and more like the man with great possessions who came to Christ, asking for eternal life..."   

The words caused me to stop and consider prayers I have heard and prayers I have prayed.  It is easy to remember so many prayers offered in gathered moments of worship that seem to be from beginning to end asking God for something.  The truth is I have prayed many such prayers during worship as well as in those moments when there is no one to hear the words coming from my heart.  So many times are prayers really are about getting.   

How do we pray the prayers of giving?  Even if we pray, "Lord, help me give more love to You," we are asking for His help which is much the same as getting something.  Maybe part of what we can give in our prayers are expressions of love for Him even as we might speak the words of love to someone we hold dear.  Or, maybe the prayers of giving might simply be offering words of praise and adoration such as we see modeled in the Psalms.  It can be quite a spiritual conundrum.  How do we pray the prayers which speak of our giving to God instead of the prayers which speak of our wanting to get something from Him?