Do you pray?
Likely, yes, at least somehow.
Are there times when you have someone come to mind who is facing uncertainty or pain? When you pray do you start with an address, “Dear God …” or something similar.
It would not be exceptional to assume that pastors, ministers, and priests pray quite a lot. Such people may often say to others, “I’ll pray for you.” It is, truth be told, part of the job. I pray for people a lot, though often such praying is not defined by a particular time or list or gathering. There are times, often morning and evening, in which I pray in a list-like way, considering who I spoke with or met during the day and offering up prayers with them in mind. There are, however, more times in which I find my prayers for others occasioned by something that I see or read or watch.
For example, I came across the following in a book by Frederick Buechner. It is a consideration of old age.
Old age is not, as the saying goes, for sissies. There are some lucky ones who little by little slow down to be sure, but others go on to the end pretty much as usual. For the majority however, it’s like living in a house that is in increasing need of repairs. The plumbing doesn’t work right anymore. There are bats in the attic. Cracked and dusty, the windows are hard to see through, and there’s a lot of creaking and groaning in bad weather. The exterior could use a coat of paint. The odd thing is that the person living in the house may feel, humanly speaking, much as always. The eighty-year-old body can be in precarious shape, yet the spirit within is as full of beans as ever.
Buechner goes on to write about what he calls a “second childhood” in a way that is playful and hopeful.
When I read the section I realized that I was reading it as prayer. I was simply reading. I had not officially sat down to pray. I can’t recall any “Dear Heavenly Father” address. However, the reading became prayerful. I was thinking about people I know and people I don’t who face the challenges of aging. I was praying for them. I am doing so even as I write this.
One of the unfortunate things that can happen in any religious context is that narrow definitions can wind up stealing, co-opting some of the very things that are positive about faith. If people are told, in rigid terms, what prayer is and what it is not, then the natural inclination to prayer can become ossified and left behind. People who would otherwise be interested in a prayerful life come to see themselves as people who never pray because they don’t pray in the way that some religious system defined.
If you grew up in an evangelical church, you may remember the scriptural invitation / injunction to “pray without ceasing.” Can you imagine how terrible that would be if it meant praying in a particular, narrowly defined, chairs-in-a-circle or religious-language-recitation kind of way?
Pray without ceasing is a beautiful invitation, though. It is possible that prayer springs up from your life, from your living. You might find yourself praying for others as you watch a news story, or for those around you as you sit in a traffic jam, or for the people inside as you drive by a hospital, or for particular people as you listen to a song.
I really am praying for you and I have attended, and still attend, many officially religious gatherings in which prayer is the bulk or a part of the programme. Those are rarely my favourite ways to pray. They are not always bad, sometimes they are great, but praying without ceasing is even better.
Beautiful...and timely....."pray without ceasing..." and "being in the Presence" are the same thing to me.....thanks for a thoughtful post....
Thanks for your prayers for the infirm and elderly Todd. I appreciate them. Still trying to understand precisely or even vaguely, what prayer does for the other or is it mainly about what it does to the pray-er? It obviously can’t bring something to Gods attention that was overlooked or unknown….so I guess it must be something else…and important enough for him to teach about it, albeit briefly, and demonstrate it. Discussion for next time.