Adonai S'fatai Tiftach
| Adonai S'fatai Tiftach |
Mishkan T'filah, pages 319
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Why Do We Recite "Adonai S'fatai TIftach"?
Before beginning the T'filah, the central prayer of the service, we recite this simple verse from Psalm 51: "Adonai, open up my lips that my mouth may declare Your praise." Before we begin praying, we ask God to use us as an instrument to speak the words that we need to say.
Have you ever had the experience of singing with other people and feeling like you got lost in the sound of all the voices around you? Have you ever been engaged in a sport so deeply that you felt like your body was moving without your mind telling it what to do? There is a joy in giving yourself to an activity so deeply that it requires no effort and everything flows from a place beyond your conscious thinking.
That is one way of describing the experience of praying deeply. At some point, the prayer flows out of you effortlessly and all you need to do is let it out of your mouth. The verse from Psalm 51 that we recite before the T'filah helps us to set our intention for our prayer. We want to pray spontaneously and joyfully. We want to feel like we are placing ourselves into God's hands so that, instead of us speaking the prayer, it feels like the the prayer is speaking us.
Have you ever had the experience of singing with other people and feeling like you got lost in the sound of all the voices around you? Have you ever been engaged in a sport so deeply that you felt like your body was moving without your mind telling it what to do? There is a joy in giving yourself to an activity so deeply that it requires no effort and everything flows from a place beyond your conscious thinking.
That is one way of describing the experience of praying deeply. At some point, the prayer flows out of you effortlessly and all you need to do is let it out of your mouth. The verse from Psalm 51 that we recite before the T'filah helps us to set our intention for our prayer. We want to pray spontaneously and joyfully. We want to feel like we are placing ourselves into God's hands so that, instead of us speaking the prayer, it feels like the the prayer is speaking us.
