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What about the rest of the week?  In the early church there were daily morning and evening services in the larger cities — generally limited to a cathedral.  These services, which were attended by people going to and coming from their daily occupations, came to be referred to as “Cathedral Prayer”.  In addition to this sort of daily prayer, monasteries adopted prayer based on schedules developed by Basil and by Benedict.  The Benedictine traditional cycle of prayers adopted in the West consisted of the following “offices”:

• Vespers — at the end of the working day
• Compline — before bedtime
• Nocturns — or Vigils or Matins — during the middle of the night
• Lauds — at daybreak
• Prime — shortly after daybreak
• Terce — during the mid-morning
• Sext — at noon
• None — during the mid-afternoon

Of course, not everyone could set aside the time for eight devotional services per day.  In the Book of Common Prayer, two primary daily “offices” were provided for:  Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer (or Evensong).  These daily “offices” (as well as mid-day prayer and others) resulted in the development of a different Lectionary referred to as the Daily Office Lectionary as opposed to a Eucharistic Lectionary such as the Revised Common Lectionary that many liturgical churches use in connection with readings from the Bible at Sunday Services.  Where the Revised Common Lectionary is based on a three year cycle (we’re reaching the end of Year C, and will begin Year A with the first Sunday of Advent) of weekly selections, the Daily Office Lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer is based on a two year cycle of daily readings.  Both Lectionaries contain readings from the Old Testament, the Psalms, a reading from Acts, Revelation or an Epistle and a reading from the Gospel for each week (Revised Common Lectionary) or day (Daily Office Lectionary).

Lectionary readings are designed to assist believers to look at the year thematically.  That is, the reading is related to the season or various cycles of the Church Year — right now, the cycle of the year is coming to a close, and the focus is on the coming of God’s Kingdom — a focus that actually continues as we move into Advent.

There are other daily devotionals covering a wide variety of approaches.  Some include inspirational poetry or writing along with scripture.  Some devotionals are designed to read the entire Bible over a certain period of time (e.g. reading the Bible in a year).  Daily aids to bible study and spiritual development can be longer or shorter.  Abraham Lincoln had a daily devotional book that had a short portion of scripture for each day, followed by an excerpt from a hymn, or poetry or other short saying — both of which could be read together in less than a minute.  The quarterly Adult Bible Studies that we often use in our class has daily scripture references that we are supposed to read between classes.

Do you practice or have you practiced in the past any sort of daily prayer or bible study regimen?  If so, share some of the different routines, devotional books, or other methods you’ve used.  Tell us what you think of different study bibles or devotionals you may have tried.