A lot of my reading in the Bible lately has been focused on prayer. Different styles of prayer in the Bible, people who prayed well and boldly, the results of prayer. I have been challenging myself with this topic and realized that often, I don’t really pray in a Biblical way. I pray in an American way.
“Dear Lord, Thank you for this food. Help it to nourish our bodies (or as my kids say, help it to be nursing our bodies), Amen.”
“Dear Lord, thank you for this day. Please help us to get over these colds. Help the kids sleep well, at least until 7:00, and keep my husband safe at work tomorrow. Thank you, Amen.”
My prayers are usually a bit more personal than the ones above, but often I don’t spend focused, intentional time in prayer except for at meals and bed time. Maybe on the way to school. We pray for ambulances and fire fighters when we see them come down the road, and we pray for our boo-boos, and we ask forgiveness when we do something wrong. But seldom do I practice what prayer actually is supposed to be - which is spending time with God, listening to him, worshipping him, instead of just telling him our needs and asking him to fix things we can’t control.
I am reading a book called, “Messy: God Likes It That Way” by A.J. Swoboda. It is a great book. He is a pastor and writes from that perspective, but it is written in such an accessible way - I think anyone would like it and “get” it. In one section he speaks of prayer this way, starting off talking about a book he read on the art of conversation:
Open-ended questions... will always spark better conversation. Open-ended questions require the other person to talk more about themselves, giving them space to be vulnerable, honest, and real... Sometimes when I pray I feel like God is not speaking to me. I should say, most of the time. At all. But when I read that book, it became clear to me. When I pray, I only ask God closed-ended questions... Now I have experienced that when I open up and ask God open-ended questions, it gives God much more of an opportunity to talk. “God, why am I so worried about my savings account?” “God, where are you?” “God, how are you going to forgive me?” If the Bible is right about something, God has more words than yes or no. He has a fully formed dictionary and can talk. We talk to God as though he knows only two words. Ask God bigger questions and you will find bigger conversation a reality.
I want my life to be a conversation with God. I want him to be my real, face-to-face friend, not just my Facebook friend that I check in on every once in awhile to see what he’s been up to. Not a priest I visit once a week for confession or someone I hope sees the candles I light in honor of those I pray for. Not someone I visit and hear about at church, or talk to and read about in preparation for something I’ll share at church. I need more than that.
My husband leaves for work around 5:00am, so for the whole time I have been a mommy, I often wake up not with my husband in my bed, but with one of my children. They crawl in during the wee hours of the morning, or I’d nurse the baby and we both fall back asleep there. This morning when it was almost but not quite time to get up yet, my daughter came and stood by my bed, and I pulled her in with me, and we silently cuddled. She lay on top of me, with her little bones poking me and her fuzzy hair tickling me, but I didn’t care. She is mine, and I love her. I’ll put up with the little discomfort for a chance to cuddle and get a bit more rest. As we lay there silently together, the picture came to me, that this is what God desires of us.
Psalm 131:2 says (ESV) “But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” The psalm is talking about waiting on God in simplicity. Not complicating matters, but waiting and hoping in the Lord. I always thought the verse must be translated wrong somehow. It doesn’t mean weaned, right? Because that is a toddler, running around and crazy. And talking. And arguing. And pouting. And fighting for toys and saying “I can do it!” when really they can’t do it yet. Surely, I thought, the verse must mean a child that is not yet weaned, and is still peaceful with its mother, content to have its needs fulfilled there.
But as I say with my daughter, my three-year-old, in the quiet of the morning, not talking, just being together and resting and enjoying each other’s embrace, I felt the meaning of the scripture. It does mean weaned. Peaceful, loving, resting, not wanting anything, but calm and quiet, confident of the love that is there. Confident and peaceful in a way that comes from a few years of knowing that mom brings love and comfort. This is prayer. Coming to God, in peace and quiet, being with him, confident of his care.
Eventually she did ask for something (breakfast), but first she rested.
Lord, as I go about my day, help me to rest in you, confident of your care, peaceful in your embrace. And help me to pray my requests out of that confidence and peace, not from worry and anxiety. And Lord, what is it you want to do today? Can I come along?
