Prayer tries to find its way to my lips
We’re almost always slow to meet up with God
Half the time, we sidle into prayer and begin to talk, ruminating with God and sharing our thoughts. On special occasions, we listen for his promptings. The other half, or way more often, chastised, we slink into prayer, encumbered with worry, fear, and shame. In the sideways, sidling, furtive form, we finish by being comforted. Sneaking in the shadows, slinking into God’s view, we end up shaken and brought to our knees.
Remain in me, as I remain in you, says the Lord;
whoever remains in me will bear much fruit. John 15:4a, 5b
Prayer has been on my mind. After some time, it found its way onto my lips.
I experience this problem often. Reminders to do something hit my desk, or my phone, or my brain, but I let them linger. Like a dog staring at me, waiting for me to do something that I’m not inclined to do just that moment, reminders beckon. Sometimes I stiffen, unsure, and only stare back.
I catch myself simulating the dogged path of walking several times in a circle. I rotate around an idea or thought, either warming up the ground with my feet to lie down, or procrastinating in an odd solo dance, round and round. I often ponder too long, running over things, wandering around as I’m thinking. Pondering has two affectations — to consider and to obsess. We can study a thing and roll it about in our head, and overthink so much as to be burdened by a great weight — a painfully ponderous postponement.
Prayer is like that. Half the time, we sidle into prayer and begin to talk, ruminating with God and sharing our thoughts. On special occasions, we listen for his promptings. The other half, or way more often, chastised, we slink into prayer, encumbered with worry, fear, and shame.
In the sideways, sidling, furtive form, we finish by being comforted. Sneaking in the shadows, slinking into God’s view, we end up shaken and brought to our knees.
Both opportunities count as effective prayer, by the way. Sidle or slink, we get personal with God. Yet, there’s that preposterous reality. We’re almost always slow to meet up with him. Prayer awaits, struggling to remind us that God is available, eager, and ready for us. We’re doggedly untrained, stare at our future, unprepared, and too often unwilling.
The transition from thinking about prayer and bowing our heads should be more closely connected. Better, instant, as attention to a conscious prompting should be. We see a stop sign ahead, for instance, and our feet automatically prepare for the inevitable decline in speed. Foot raised to hit the brake. We don’t even think about it. A child cries, and our heart stops. We don’t assume a child’s cry signals nothing of importance. We consider whether we can help, or we bolt for quieter environs.
We are trained to be quick. Our hands reach for an innumerable list of things dropping from a table, our lap, or the wind loosening our hat. Even simple things like advertisements on billboards, posters, websites, and t-shirts trigger recognition signals from our vast store of logos, words, pictures, and sounds. We’re trained in so many ways to respond to a host of attention triggers with urgency. Shouldn’t prayer be like that?
Perhaps I am wrong. Prayer should not be impulse-driven at all, but always a carefully designed and coordinated activity—proper worship.
Nah.
That’s supplication prayer. It’s good. It’s communal and celebratory. Like weddings, we need the hosanna and processions and holding hands. The rest of the marriage needs God over more extended periods, decades of interactions. The lessons of worship reveal the need for practice and intensity, though. We need to take the same seriousness with our relationship to God outside of the essential rituals.
Prayer is supposed to invoke a conversation. We listen, not just speak. Yet, unlike an accomplished driver’s feet ready for the brake, we only bother to speak with God when we’ve crashed. Prayer, then, becomes a last-minute thing, thought of only after the disaster is upon us. It’s the bible in jail. The grief cry. The deathbed confession.
That’s OK, too. Sad, disappointing, and sometimes tragic, but like the thief on the cross, still extremely useful.
I’ve got a rash of books on prayer, from Von Balthasar, St. JP II, Ronda Chervin, and John Eldridge. They compartmentalize prayer, poeticize it, rationalize it, and even amortize it. Prayer’s got complicated sections and parts — innuendo, decorum, delight, and dependencies.
It seems daunting when I obsess over it. That’s because reading about prayer is studious and formative. Next is exercising. We need to practice praying, wrestle with it, and grow in our relationship with God. We are God’s sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and collaborators.
It took hours to learn to whistle or snap our fingers. Some of us never learned.
Prayer has been on my mind. I’m looking at it right now.