An Ancient Practice Finds Renewal
From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have made daily prayer a cornerstone of faithful living. In the middle ages, monastic communities like the Benedictines practiced the office of daily prayer, coming together every three hours to pray, recite the psalms, and hear the word proclaimed. In today's world it can be challenging to find time to pray, and even then it can be hard to know what to pray.
For generations Presbyterians have turned to the Book of Common Worship section on Daily Prayers to help guide their daily prayer life. This work, in combination with the daily lectionary, provides a wealth of resources for prayer. You can find more information, including how to purchase, about the Daily Prayer book by visiting here.
However, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has recently introduced a new way of interacting with the practice of daily prayer. For many people, myself included, it is rare to go anywhere without our trusty smartphones. With that in mind, the PC(USA) has developed an iPhone app that centralizes the practice of daily prayer. For more information about the development of the app and a link to the app store, click here. Below are some screen shots from the app and my thoughts on the experience of using the app. Click on any of the screenshots to see a larger version of the image.
One of the strongest features of this app is the ability to pray straight through the daily service, including all of the scripture, without having to "break" your mental state to look up the next passage. It is much easier to remain in a state of prayer (at least for me) thanks to the fluidity of the experience; by tapping the right side of the screen the app moves to the next element of the service (much like a page turn on a Kindle device or app). This is quite different from the experience when using the book of flipping back and forth from one passage to another, losing you place, etc. It is also a very streamlined experience; the app knows based on the date and time from your phone what service to present. So, if I open the app at 8am on a given day, the Morning Prayer service will be loaded along with the appropriate readings for the day.
Additionally, as you can see from the bottom right screen shot, you can customize just what you want to be included in your daily practice. For example, since I use this for personal prayer I do not have the Dismissal included, but if I was going to be leading a corporate prayer service I could easily turn that element on. The app also allows for customization of elements such as font size and type, a night reading mode, and version of The Lord's Prayer, among others. Finally, there is a section describing the history of daily prayer along with tips for success.
This is an app that does one thing and does it extremely well. The navigation is simple, it loads extremely quickly as there are no unnecessary graphics, the focus is simply on helping you develop a practice of fruitful daily prayer. For $2.99 this is a wonderful value (especially considering the book version is $30); for less than a coffee at Starbucks you can have a wonderful guide to daily prayer with you wherever you go!
Have you tried out this app (or others)? How did they impact your daily practice of prayer (if at all)? I would love to hear more in the comments below!