Morning, Midday, and Evening
by Gary Henry
via WordPoints.com
"Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour" (Acts 10:9).
The practice of praying at set times is an old and honorable custom. And despite our modern disdain for anything that isn’t spontaneous, the habit of praying at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the day has much to recommend it. These three times of daily prayer shouldn’t be all the praying we do (any more than the giving thanks at mealtime), but it is a helpful framework within which we pray. “Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice” (Psalms 55:17).
Sometimes I think we “Protestants” are so used to dismissing whatever is “Catholic,” we reject anything that might lean toward liturgy or ritual. In doing so, we sometimes throw the baby out with the bathwater, cutting ourselves off from devotional practices and spiritual disciplines that would be profoundly beneficial to us.
Morning
The Lord sometimes got up before everybody else so that He could pray (Mark 1:35). If it was important to Him, it is no less a blessing for us to set the direction and tone for the day by communing with our Father, dedicating the day’s firstfruits to Him.
Midday
This is the time for a crucial check-in and recalibration. We consciously bring God back to the center of a day that has probably become busy and distracted. This period of prayer helps us to “sanctify the day’s unfolding,” as one person put it. What a joy!
Evening
In addition to getting up early to pray, the Lord also stayed up late (Luke 6:12). For us, His followers, this can be a beloved time for thanksgiving, confession, and peaceful surrender, entrusting the day that has passed and the night to come into God’s hands.
If you disagree with what I’ve written, it’s not me but the prophet Daniel that you should question: “Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days” (Daniel 6:10). To be sure, not all of us have the freedom to pray at three fixed times each day, but even in a modified form, praying within a daily prayer-framework has benefits and blessings that are well worth making the sacrifice.
"If your day is hemmed in with prayer, it is less likely to come unraveled" (Cynthia Lewis).
