{"id":24473,"date":"2026-03-11T16:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T16:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/with-meditative-prayer-even-silence-is-praise\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T17:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:54:21","slug":"with-meditative-prayer-even-silence-is-praise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/prayer\/how-to-pray\/with-meditative-prayer-even-silence-is-praise\/","title":{"rendered":"With Meditative Prayer, Even Silence Is Praise"},"content":{"rendered":"

I lay in a hospital bed, a monitor attached to my chest counting every beat of my heart. Hours earlier, I\u2019d awakened at home barely able to breathe. \u201cGet to the ER immediately,\u201d my doctor said.<\/p>\n

The ER was a din of voices and machines. The man in the next bed had his TV at top volume. The noise made prayer impossible.<\/p>\n

Not that I was much good for prayer <\/a>right now. My only thought was a plaintive Why me? <\/em>I\u2019d had open-heart surgery years earlier to replace a defective valve. I did everything doctors tell you to do. Ate healthily. Exercised.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t fair. My younger son, Tim, was getting married in a month. My wife, Carol, and I had just returned from seeing family in California, and all kinds of work had piled up. I was even trying to wrap up final edits on a book I\u2019d written\u2026about prayer!<\/p>\n

Would my heart<\/a> force me to cancel everything? Was the problem even more serious?<\/p>\n

I stopped myself before the next Why me? <\/em>My chaotic thoughts were swirling around one overriding emotion: fear<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I kept seeing the expression on Carol\u2019s face that morning as I gasped for breath. Fear and helplessness<\/a>. Exactly what I was feeling now.<\/p>\n

My symptoms had stabilized, but I knew something was wrong and it would take a cardiologist<\/a> to diagnose the problem. The hospital was jammed, and everything was taking forever.<\/p>\n

The wait was intolerable.<\/p>\n

At last I looked at a clock. Two-thirty in the morning.<\/p>\n

My new book, Even Silence Is Praise, <\/em>explores the ancient practice of contemplative prayer<\/a>. In plainer words, it\u2019s about listening to God instead of talking at him.<\/p>\n

Lying there with my jangling thoughts, I realized I needed to follow my own advice. I got out of bed\u2014the heart monitor was portable and my breathing seemed okay\u2014and padded out into the hall. I found an empty cot in an out-of-the-way place, lay down and stared at the acoustic-tiled ceiling.<\/p>\n

It was a relief to be away from that TV, but the noise in my head was just as loud. Anxiety<\/a>. Fear. Anger.<\/p>\n

Contemplative prayer is simple\u2014it\u2019s basically a Christian form of meditation<\/a>\u2014and I\u2019ve been doing it for years. You quiet your brain and slowly repeat a single word\u2014God, Jesus, faith, peace <\/em>or whatever works for you. Do that for 10 or 20 or 30 minutes. When all goes well, you enter a state of deep relaxation. Your mind settles down. You stop talking to God and, for once, truly listen.<\/p>\n

Ah, but if you\u2019re like me, what sounds simple is actually quite hard. Quiet my brain? Ha! Stop worrying? Stop thinking about those deadlines and petty resentments and the grocery list and that friend I forgot to call?<\/p>\n

Over the years, I\u2019ve developed some strategies for quieting my inner voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the hospital, all I wanted to do was beg God for help. But I knew I needed more than that. I needed God\u2019s reassuring voice. So I tried to put into practice what I\u2019d just finished writing about in the book.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I tried. I\u2019ll tell you how it worked out.<\/p>\n

1. Visualize peace.<\/strong>
\nWorries are among the loudest voices in our head, especially in a crisis. They make it hard even to start to pray. In my book, I write that the best thing to do with worries is to \u201cgive them over to God.\u201d Easier said than done.<\/p>\n

One way is to picture myself physically doing this. Lying on that hospital cot, I visualized a healing pool of water, like the one at Bethesda. I sank into the pool, imagining God soothing my fears and quieting my soul like the water flowing over my skin.<\/p>\n

It worked. My body, which had been on high alert, relaxed and my head began to clear.<\/p>\n

Images can do this precisely because they are not words. Picture how you want to feel <\/a>and your mind will often go along.<\/p>\n

2. Meditate on the Word.<\/strong>
\nOnce you\u2019ve cleared out your own clamoring words, it\u2019s time to replace them with God\u2019s words<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re someone who memorizes Scripture, call forth a favorite passage. Even a single phrase or word can work.<\/p>\n

In the hospital, I focused on one phrase: Be still and know that I am God<\/a>. <\/em>I repeated those words, each time shortening the sentence:<\/p>\n

\u201cBe still and know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBe still.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The power and goodness of God came through.<\/p>\n

3. Acknowledge distractions and let them go.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I first tried contemplative prayer, I felt terrible at it\u2014I could achieve a quiet state for only moments at a time. Thoughts and worries kept reappearing. Why couldn\u2019t I make them go away?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned that distractions<\/a> never go away. Even the most experienced practitioner of prayer lives with a chorus of inner voices. The key is to stop worrying about that.<\/p>\n

When a distracting thought<\/a> comes up, acknowledge it, then give it to God. If it bounces out of God\u2019s hands and comes back to you, do it again. You might spend your whole prayer time doing only that. Doesn\u2019t matter. You\u2019re thinking about God, right?<\/p>\n

The more I gave my worries to God, the more I felt him there with me in the hospital. Just the repeated process of giving myself to God was itself a form of prayer.<\/p>\n

4. Put away your phone.<\/strong>
\nThis sounds obvious, but you\u2019d be surprised how easy it becomes to assume you need some device to help you pray. Technology can be wonderful for connecting us to loved ones or enabling us to access Scripture on the go.<\/p>\n

But remember that people have been praying for thousands of years before the invention of prayer apps. I\u2019m often tempted to get out my phone to remind me of the exact phrasing in a Bible passage or some words of wisdom from a book I\u2019ve read recently.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t do it. God is not in the phone; God is already with you<\/a>. Inner silence will enable you to remember that and feel God\u2019s presence most fully.<\/p>\n

5. Pray for others.<\/strong>
\nOnce your mind is quiet and you have become aware of God\u2019s presence, you can turn your attention to where God\u2019s heart is\u2014his ceaseless redemptive work, which you are part of.<\/p>\n

Think of people in your life who need God\u2019s healing or helping touch<\/a>. In the hospital, I immediately thought of Carol.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to tell God what to do for someone. God already knows what to do. Just bring the person into your mind, and imagine God at work in their life.<\/p>\n

I pictured Tim and Henley, nervous and excited about the momentous next step in their life together. I pictured my older son and his wife.<\/p>\n

I pictured my siblings and their families, whom I\u2019d seen in California, all with their own joys and sorrows.<\/p>\n

My cardiologist and the other patients under his care.<\/p>\n

The doctors and nurses hard at work helping others in the hospital.<\/p>\n

The more you bring people in your life into God\u2019s presence<\/a>, the more you will settle into the idea that God is at work everywhere. Including right where you are praying.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal of contemplative prayer is to give you an experience of God as God is. Not the God you pester with demands or try to marshal to your side in some dispute.<\/p>\n

The living God, the creator of the universe, there with you wherever you are.<\/p>\n

I was in the ER for 36 hours. Eventually, the cardiologist arrived and diagnosed the problem. I needed a replacement for the artificial valve I\u2019d gotten 14 years earlier.<\/p>\n

This time, the surgery was minimally invasive. I was breathing fine and feeling like a new person one day later.<\/p>\n

But, really, the renewal had already happened on that cot in the hospital hallway. By the time I saw the cardiologist, the fear that had ruled my mind and spirit was gone.<\/p>\n

I had given it to God, along with everything else. I had quieted my mind, focused on a few words from Scripture and turned my attention to the people in my life who needed God just as much as I did.<\/p>\n

God met me in that quiet place<\/a>. I hope, with the help of contemplative prayer, he will meet you too in your time of need.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/p>\n

Rick Hamlin is the author of Even Silence Is Praise: Quiet Your Mind and Awaken Your Soul with Christian Meditation.<\/em><\/p>\n

For more inspiring stories, subscribe to <\/em>Guideposts<\/strong><\/a> magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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