Sister Genevieve Glen offers us some down-to-earth advice about praying with a Scripture passage
The first rule for praying with Scripture is to put away all those books you’ve been collecting about how to pray with Scripture. Would you follow someone else’s script to carry on an intimate conversation with someone you love? The second rule is to muzzle the inner voice telling you that praying with Scripture is hard. The third rule is even shorter: listen! Listen quietly, listen deeply, listen past what you have always thought. Listen because before you even pick up the Bible, Someone is talking to you!
When we open the Bible to Genesis 1, we immediately learn that our God is a God who speaks. Since God has created us in God’s own image, we can expect that when God speaks to us, we can talk back! In fact, we are born into that ongoing conversation, though it may take us a while to recognize it and to learn the vocabulary that fills out the basic exchange between the God who says, “Let this person be!” and the little cluster of possibilities with our name on it who has answered, “I will!”
There is an ancient tradition called lectio divina, or “holy reading,” that offers help, at least to get started. It proposes four steps, then sneaks in a fifth. First, read. Read very slowly, listening for God’s voice. Then, when something catches your attention, stop. Think it over, but think it over with one ear open to what God might be whispering through the words. It may be just a glimpse of something about Christ, God’s ultimate Word; it might be a brief insight into God’s will for your life. It won’t be an elaborate theology lesson! Let your thoughts turn into something you want to say back to God. When you’re done, go back to reading. But don’t be surprised if God does not follow the “rules” here. Sometimes the Holy Spirit may draw you through and beyond into simple silence, mutual presence. Just stay there until God invites you to move on. You can repeat the process for as long as you like, or linger on one particular step until the time you have set aside for prayer is up. Sometimes the Holy Spirit, who is notorious for ignoring our careful rules and procedures, may invite you to skip around among the steps, or to cut a step or two altogether. Freedom to follow wherever you are led is key to this kind of simple biblical conversation.
When you’re done, listen for a minute more to see if anything you have heard or noticed or thought about lingers in your mind. Pack it up to carry away with you—write it down, memorize it, jot a note—so you can take it out again through the day and chew it over a little more as you go through your regular routine.
The fifth step? Live what you have heard! Then you become a living word whose life speaks what you have heard for others to hear.
Sister Genevieve Glen is a contemplative nun of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Walburga. She is an award-winning hymn text writer and poet, and has published articles in a number of liturgical journals, including 
