Have you ever been inside a church sanctuary as the sun is going down? How did it make you feel? I’ve been in University Auditorium (a very church-like building) at the University of Florida a number of times for organ concerts at sundown. While you’re concentrating on the music you are aware of darkening windows. It feels as if the darkness is enveloping you.

From early times in the Christian church people gathered for worship in the evening. In the middle ages it was common for regular folks to join the monks at a monastery for vespers or evening prayer.

There is a very nice evening hymn by Sabine Barring-Gould:

Now the day is over; night is drawing nigh;
Shadows of the evening steal across the sky.

Jesus, give the weary calm and sweet repose;
With your tend’rest blessing may our eyelids close.

In our modern times with electric lights and prime-time TV evening doesn’t have the same sense of a time of winding down that it generations ago. Evening has lost its place as a time of prayer, of placing ourselves in the arms of Jesus. I think that’s a mistake.

I pray the Jesus prayer, a practice from the Orthodox church before bed. I repeat the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” around 250 times. I don’t do it to make Jesus see how pious I am, but to remind myself of his presence and my human condition.

I encourage people to find their own way to pray in the evening.

Read Psalms 4:8 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne