Many of us have probably had the experience of someone praying for us by name, in person, right in front of (or next to) us. Maybe they’re even holding our hands or laying hands on our heads or shoulders.
A Prayer Resolution
This is not an aspiration. It is not something that you reach for and hope you achieve, not one of those cross-your-fingers-and-hope-it-works-out kind of things.
A View from the Pew: Our Prayer Requests Speak Volumes
From my childhood to today, the churches to which I have belonged have all engaged in the ritual of voicing prayer concerns. This occurred most frequently and meaningfully on Wednesday nights in what we called “prayer meetings.”
Crossroads: Prayer
When I was ten, my father asked me where I wanted to go on vacation for my 13th birthday. Turning 13 was a big deal, and so I got to pick our vacation spot. So I thought of the craziest place I could think of, sure that we wouldn’t get to go.
The Sound of Silence
Silence. We experience it so infrequently, most of us wouldn’t even recognize it. We wake to loud alarms, the drip of brewing coffee, running water as we prepare for our day.
Get Together
We check boxes to ensure that persons are just right for us, a good fit for our company, to ensure that they are who they claim to be. It’s a tight squeeze—most of who we are doesn’t make it in.
Not Another Word
Suffering in secret, it’s not what Jesus did—not that he had a choice in the matter, but it’s what his followers do religiously. Many of us believe talking about pain and subsequent grief somehow takes away from God’s glory.
Good Talking to You
My prayer life has had its ups and downs, its verbal love feasts, its spats and silent treatments. But this is the nature of prayer, a catch-all for everything said and unsaid.
Just Keep Talking
What were we talking about? My sentences are running together like my days. I lose my train of thought midway, derailed by one thing or another that was going the other way.
Who Am I Talking To?
We are now six months into a global pandemic due to COVID-19. I won’t venture to mention the death toll. It will be higher by the time you read this. Someone is on their deathbed now, taking their last breath.
How Do We Pray from Here?
Nearly 160,000 people have died in America due to COVID-19. So many names. Too many to name or write down on my prayer list.
Blah, Blah, Blah
How do you pray when life looks like gibberish, when so many words are running together—pandemic, police brutality, protest, Confederate monuments, masks—and you can’t make sense of any of it?
Connections 05.24.2020: Let Us Pray
Jesus’ followers had watched him ascend to heaven. Before he ascended, he told them to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to come upon them. As they gathered to wait, they “were constantly devoting themselves to prayer…” (v. 14a).
Assume the Position
Put your hands down. You are not under arrest. I am not a police officer and have no training in law enforcement. Perhaps, this wasn’t the best title but it does make my point: prayer is not a position.
Your Kingdom Come
Founder of the Advent Project, William H. Peterson, wrote, “While there is scant hope of changing the culture around us, the Church need not be a fellow traveler.
Connections 11.24.2019: Prayerful Hopes
Since my daughters were very small, I have written them several letters per year in special journals that I bought for them. The earliest entries detail their milestones (“You crawled toward the remote control today” or “You slept in your big-girl bed all night without waking us up”).
Flame: Praying for Sad Situations
Children can really identify with a sense of sadness, and, as a fact of life, sad things happen. They occur in our lives, in the lives of people we know, and in the world as a whole. Here is a prayer station to help children (especially younger ones) pray that God will bring joy and happiness to those experiencing times of sadness.
Prayer is the Conversation of a Lifetime
Prayer is a fact of life. Like birth and death, puberty, pimples, and periods, marriage and those mid-life crises, there is prayer. If we are to make it through these moments, then we will need to pray.
Take a Step Back
Prayer is not a question and answer session, an exchange of whys for how this is all going to work out. Prayer is not God’s tell-all. It is not the time to corner God in our prayer closet and demand an explanation.
Say What?
When God knows it all and none of it makes sense to you, what do you pray? How do you respond when the posture of prayer doesn’t feel right?
What to Say When You Don’t Want to Open Your Mouth
At one time or another, I’ve said all of these things or some naïve but well-meaning version of them to family members and friends, church members and complete strangers. Forgive me.
May I Have Your Attention, Please?
The late poet Mary Oliver in an essay titled Upstream wrote, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” She’s right. It begins, not on Sunday mornings, but before we get out of bed each day.
A View from the Pew: What to Say When You Pray in Front of People
Each week at my church we have a “deacon of the week” whose most visible responsibility is to say a prayer before the offering is collected.
Pray Tell
American philosopher William James said of prayer, “Many reasons have been given why we should not pray, whilst others are given why we should. But in all this very little is said of the reason why we do pray.
Pray Like God Is Listening
“I don’t know what to say or where to begin.” This is a frequent response when I ask persons about their prayer life. This seems to settle the matter for them. They figure, “I can’t pray so I won’t.”
A Silent Treatment
This post is not a call to punish anyone, to withhold communication for the purpose of driving home the message. No one messed up. No one needs to come to their senses and apologize. I am not asking you to take my side and refuse to speak to him or her. I won’t ask you to swear to a code of silence.
Pray or Stay the Same
Prayer and change go together. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. We say, “Prayer changes things.” First line of defense or last resort, we believe that prayer is the answer. Expecting a heavenly thumbs up or when our back is up against the wall, we bow our heads, put our hands together, or close our eyes and pray.
Undivided Attention
Now, what was I saying? My attention span is not very long these days. I say these days because I don’t remember which day it was that I began to forget when I stopped being able to catch up, to keep up with one day after another. Like these sentences, they all run together.
Our Prayer Language
We trust God. Of course, we do. We fold our hands and we don’t ever try to raise them to interject our point of view. “Listen God, I’ve been thinking and….” We dare not say a prayer and then intercept. No, God is in control.
Welcome Home
Last week, I was studying at the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina as part of their Summer Institute for Reconciliation. It’s their tenth anniversary and I am certainly benefiting from the depth and breadth of the work of past facilitators, liturgists, musicians, and participants.
Pray at All Hours
While we have come to expect a twenty-four-hour news cycle and, if we could, we’d stare at our social media feeds for just as long, the idea that God speaks at times and days other than at 11 a.m. on Sunday mornings continues to be a stretch for many people.
Prayer is Not Seasonal
Commercials tell us that it is time for families to gather around the Christmas tree and the television. Jingle the bells. Add snow to the background. Cue smiling families, dressed alternately in red and green, making snowmen and snowballs. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”
Feeling Prayer
At the start, let me say what this meditation is not about. It is not about expressive versus non-expressive prayer, verbalizing versus praying silently. I am not attempting to make you feel “warm and fuzzy” on the inside or judge persons who don’t feel that way during prayer.
Prayer is a Happy Place
“Let us pray” is not a call for sad eyes and frowning faces, shuffling feet or sweaty palms. Entering the presence of God with the thought, “How am I going to explain this?” is not the aim. Prayer should not be treated as merely a confessional for the wrongs we’ve done and filled with apologies for not being God’s “little angels.”
Say More
Why is it so hard for us to “have a little talk with Jesus”? Why can’t we find the words to say? No mouthful here. For some of us, it can be downright awkward. Where do we begin? How do we address God? What do we say to the God who knows our thoughts before we are even introduced to them (Psalm 139:2)?
Believing In Prayer
Do we really believe that God hears us when we pray? If so, then why do we say the same thing over and over again? “God is great. God is good. Let us thank God for our food. Amen.” Fourteen words. Sixty-six characters shy of the 140-character limit for a tweet.
Praying Hands
These days, prayer is often seen as insignificant. We place it on our programs as a kind gesture, a pleasantry extended out of respect for our Elder God. It is a routine remark given—though not out of necessity.
A Bowed Head
“Give us, this day, our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). It is a prayer answered when we sit at a table for a meal—unless we are on a diet and have given up carbohydrates.
Arm-wrestling Prayer
After more than ten years in ordained ministry, I have found that we do more talking about prayer than actually talking to God. To be sure, we know that we should pray….