Finding our prayer.

I’ve got to say that I have spent much of my Christian life agonising over not praying properly or praying enough; and in some ways, I still do. Partly that was because I was raised in a Christian culture where praying involved words in a certain pattern and done in a particular way and doing that didn’t always work for me.

Then, a few years ago, I realised that prayer is a lot more varied and rich than just words and that I was praying in many ways that I had not realised. Prayer is about what brings us closer to a sense of the Divine in our lives and I realised that for me that was often music, or poetry or working in the garden or just being attentive to the people or the beauty around me. Praying is what found me in connection with the God who is all around me.

The disciples had also spent a lot of time agonising about what was the best way to pray and Jesus’ response was to try to take away their anxiety by giving them a simple pattern which we call ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. He gave them a simple prayer to take away their worry but also emphasised to them the nature of the God that they were trying to connect with in prayer. Like the disciples, I think that our ways of praying often reflect the idea of a god who does not really want to connect and who does not really want us to have fullness of life. In other words, the ways we pray often imply that God does not really love us and that we have to beg in order to get God’s attention. Jesus says that God is not like a bad neighbour or like an abusive parent! God is ‘Abba’ Daddy; the one with whom we can presume intimacy, not distance.

Therefore, when we seek the Divine, don’t worry, just keep asking, searching and knocking; and ask, search and knock knowing that the one we are seeking is on our side even before we knock/search/ask. That is Jesus' basic lesson in prayer. Acknowledge the goodness of the God to whom you pray, but it doesn’t necessarily stop there. Prayer can also lead me to be changed and to be prepared then to be used as an agent of change. When we crack through into the divine presence we can find ourselves moved into a new space and perhaps challenged. A poem or a song can change me and be the call of God to the New.

For me this has led to a much greater openness and peace about my prayer life. I no longer feel that I am letting myself or God down if I don’t pray twice a day. Instead I am finding that my prayers often happen when I least expect it, and my task is to stay attentive to when the gift is given and grateful for it.

Blessings

Gordon