As I reflect on my spiritual journey, I realize that my concept of prayer is very different from what it was many years ago. I hope that this is a result of some maturing in the faith. So often we are tempted to think of prayer as our effort to get God’s attention or to plug momentarily into the “power source” of the universe to help us with a personal problem or concern. We ask, seek, beg, plead, cajole, bargain and perhaps even threaten. And we wonder if God really listens—and if God really answers—and perhaps even if God really cares.
Over a period of time I have developed an understanding of prayer I have never tried to put into words. In fact, I’m not sure I have even been aware of how my understanding of prayer has changed. So please bear with me as I feebly try to articulate my evolving experience of prayer.
Because I believe that the whole universe rests in the heart of God, is penetrated by the divine presence, and exists in dialogue with the Creator, I must also believe that God is already there working redemptively for the best possible. And through the prayers of the saints and all of God’s children, the faithful are also already “there” striving to make a transforming difference. Like the atmosphere is filled with sound and light waves we cannot see or hear and do not detect but enjoy through radios and televisions, so our universe is filled with the goodness of God and the contributing concerns of God’s children radiating the pulse of the Peaceable Kingdom.
Prayer is a matter of my becoming a part of and experiencing that abiding, omnipresent, and costly investment of God in our world. As I approach God with my concern for someone ill for example, I am not a “Lone Ranger” attempting to focus God’s attention on this person’s vulnerable condition. I am privileged to share with God in God’s concern, presence, and activity for that person. When I approach God over a concern for the millions of hungry persons in our world, I am not burdened with the task of directing God to take note of this crisis. I am allowed to bear in a small way some of God’s sorrow over this needless tragedy, to feel heaven’s righteous indignation, to mingle my prayer with those of countless others including the parents witnessing the starvation of their children, and find the strength and drive to unite my efforts with others to bring an end to this worldwide disgrace. And when I approach God over the rape and poisoning of the exquisitely beautiful creation, I need not despair over the task of getting the Creator to notice the demise of this good earth. God feels every loss from the sparrow that falls to the whale that breathes its last. What I do need to do is get off my “blessed assurances” and do my part to fulfill the human calling of taking care of and healing this earth. In short, prayer is a way we can daily re-experience our baptism as we are immersed in the heart of God
There are many implications (and questions) arising from this understanding of prayer. I would leave you with just three:
- Prayer can occur in our lives in so many ways. We can enter into the heart of God through music, the beauty and grandeur of nature, the play of children, the intimacy of our life-mate, the touch of a friend, the panorama of a good movie, the challenge of an excellent book, the caress of a special memory, and so much more. Because God is in all and all is in God, every place can be an altar and every time a Sabbath.
- By God’s grace we are privileged to co-create with our Maker as we enter into God’s presence and activity on behalf of our world. We are not “Lone Rangers” hurling our prayer into an abyss hoping against hope that one will find a receptive ear. We are part of a divine conspiracy (remember that to conspire originally meant “to breathe with”) to mold this world into patterns after a Carpenter from Nazareth.
- Prayer is an opportunity to experience in ever more widening circles the vastness of God’s concern, the communion of the saints, and the joy of a creation kept forever in the heart of God. Prayer allows us to focus on something as “small” as a shattered dream of a child and as “large” as the fate of the cosmos and to see both concerns as a part of the other. Prayer becomes a daily opportunity to worship on a cozy and grand scale all at the same time as we feel our hearts beating to the same rhythm as God’s.
With such an understanding of prayer, we can “pray without ceasing” as we “live, move, and have our being” in the One who loves us and our world and who holds us forever in nail-scarred hands. That’s why I am fond of saying that prayer is “dancing in the Light” even when all about us may be darkness. When we immerse ourselves into the heart of God, the Light shines—oh, how it shines!
