I don't know just when it was. I don't know exactly why. But, many years ago, some time while I was living up in the Boyne City area, I made a quiet spiritual breakthrough in my life. I started keeping regular morning devotions. It was not just that I started praying regularly in the mornings. That wasn't the breakthrough.

The breakthrough was that I started wanting to pray.

To some, this may not seem like much of an accomplishment. Isn't this how Christians are supposed to begin their day? Maybe for some people prayer comes naturally. Maybe for some people spiritual discipline comes naturally. For me, it never did. So when I began keeping regular morning devotions, it was really something new.

Now, there had been many times when I resolved to be more faithful in prayer. I knew I should be. I determined to make myself pray — to turn over a new leaf spiritually. For a while I did. But, always the regular practice of prayer was laid aside.

I am a person who depends a lot on inspiration and creativity. I like to respond to the moment. Discipline often comes hard for me.

Yet, I have always believed I would be a better Christian if I prayed, studied and meditated every day. I know I've always believed it. I have faithfully preached and taught it. I've told the pilgrims on the Emmaus Walk that the disciplines of the spirit are essential to the vitality of their Christian life.

I'm sure it's good advice.

Often, I've compared spiritual disciplines to calisthenics. Muscles in our bodies atrophy if unused. Our spiritual lives atrophy without spiritual discipline. That sounds logical. But, to be honest, this analogy has never helped me much. Many, many years ago, Robin and I bought an exercise bike. It sat around unused for years. It’s been gone a long time now.

Spiritual self-interest has never been a very strong motivation for me. A long time ago I picked up a book on spirituality. I think it was Matthew Fox's book on How to be a Musical, Mystical Bear (or whatever it was). I barely got into it before I quit. I never finished it. Now I seem to have lost the book. I remember thinking Fox's theological method was unsound. But, that's not the reason I quit reading the book. I'd like to be a “musical, mystical bear” — but, not all that much. I'd like to have a greater measure of peace, assurance and wisdom; but, experience has shown that I can probably muddle through life as I am.

The great classics of Western spirituality are a foreign world to me. I have trouble maintaining an interest in the literature of spirituality. It doesn't matter if it is the writings of a contemporary like Henri Nouwen, or if it is Thomas á Kempis or The Cloud of Unknowing I soon bore of it. I soon lay it aside.

Maybe it's my (left brain dominant male) rationalism that gets in the way. I don't know. Spiritual Formation sounds like a good idea. I don't often have the time or the interest.

But, one day a strange thing happened. It occurred to me to look at my morning devotions as an act of love and intercession. This was a new thought.

And now, it is love that draws me to the place of prayer. I read and pray and meditate because there are so many people on my heart. I can do and say so little for them. I want to do and say — and be — so much.

Solitude and quiet do not take me away from others. They bind me nearer to them. Faces I no longer see, voices I no longer hear, call me back to the place of prayer. I pray because I love my family. I pray because there are people for whom I have a powerful affection. I pray because we are all in this strange human struggle together.

Love holds me on the path of devotion. My own desire for spiritual wholeness never did.

And, now — strangely enough — I find there is within me a renewed hunger and thirst after God. I usually follow a plan of sorts. I read the Bible. I try to expose myself to a wide range of Biblical material. I often meditate on the Psalms in Hebrew. I take time to read and pray. I name the names that are on my heart. I even read devotional literature.

But, it is not for myself, or my own spiritual self-interest that I pray. In all I do my prayer is this: "My God, accept these acts of devotion as my sacrifice of love and devotion to You, on behalf of those whose names and faces are on my heart today. Let it not be for nothing that I have remembered them."

— Craig L. Adams