What are your earliest
memories of prayer? For many of us it is sitting cross legged on the
cold floor of the school hall, eyes squeezed shut as we mumble out
the Lord's prayer. These are my early memories. That and being in a
big, dark church and just finding it all a bit creepy really. I was,
and have remained, someone who prefers to be 'out there'. Who is much
more likely to experience something beyond myself when out and about,
looking at the world, feeling that rhythm of life all around me.
So the idea of prayer
for me as a boxed up, contained thing that you do with certain words
attached to it has always been a bizarre one. No, prayer for me has
been more like that moment on a cool crisp morning, when you are
walking up the street and fill your lungs with that cool air and say
to in your heart 'I am so glad to be alive'. That is a prayer of
thankfulness. Or prayer is the moment when bent over the sink doing
the dishes I say 'God, what should I do about this situation?' and
let the possibilities flow as I stack up the clean plates.
Because God, (surprise,
surprise!) is everywhere. I believe and find God to be in my waking,
my sleeping, my thinking, my doing, my past, my future and very much
in my present. God, I find, in the birds, in the sunshine, in the air
I breathe, in the eyes of those around me, in laughter, in joys and
in sorrows.
There is God,
underneath it all, like a steady heartbeat that I feel and hear in
every part of my life. So I makes sense to me that prayer is
something to be unleashed onto the whole of life rather than
contained in specific moments. Prayer in this way is an attitude, a
constant connection, a living of life in the presence and guidance of
that God who is everywhere and in everything.
That's not to say that
moments where your entire attention are on God and you retreat to
just the quiet inside yourself are not important. This is where
things get trickier for me. I am such an active person that sitting
in silence for any length of time is difficult because I am always
thinking about the next thing I want to do. But when I do it, which I
schedule in for myself a couple of times a week, I am nearly always
surprised and bowled over by what comes to me. A sense of peace, yes,
but also many times a feeling of deep conviction about what I ought
to do or how I might see my situation in a new way.
And praying for others,
well that really is a transformatory thing. Try this one on for size,
try asking for as many blessings as you can imagine for someone who
annoys you or has upset you. It is incredibly freeing and I've found
it shift the dynamic of my relationships many times. Praying for the
community and the world is part of life working for a local church
and I really treasure it. It remind me every day that my part in the
world is so very small, that life is so very fragile and to look
outside of myself to the situation of others. It challenged that
reflex to be all about me and my world and draws me outside of
myself.
For all its benefits,
though, perhaps one of the trickiest things we find hard to get to
grips with is that prayer is not like a vending machine. You don't
pop a prayer in and out comes your tasty treat. I tried that out when
I was five asking for a bag of hot chips and I can tell you it
doesn't appear to work like that! Logically we know that if every
prayer was answered the world would be a very different (and perhaps
very odd!) place indeed. It wouldn't even be possible for every
individuals prayer to be answered when so many conflicting, and
perhaps sometimes unwise, prayers are prayed every day.
Recently as I have been
praying about one particular issue in my life I have been struck by
the feeling that God may not be answering my prayer because he is
answering someone else's and logically I know that these two things
can't happen at once. Does that make sense? I don't know, but
sometimes I wonder if that is how it is. If I am being told gently
and quietly to just hold on because in the chain reaction of events
linked to everything that happens there is someone who really needs
to be heard and for things to come together in their favour.
The life of prayer can
certainly be mysterious. I have had so many prayers answered and yet
sometimes it is those big one, those great whopping burdens of life,
that never seem to be relieved. In all of that, though, I have found
that one prayer never fails to be answer and that is this, 'Be with
me, hold me up, be my rock' and its close neighbour 'Guide me, direct
me, keep me strong.' That, for me, is the true beauty and wonder of
prayer - its ability to keep you going on life's journey, to travel
through its difficulties and to fully appreciate its joys.
