Just Us, Justice

A Prayer Reflection: Contemporary Anne Lamott, suggests the only three prayers that you really need are ”Help”, “Wow” and “Thank you”. These 3 words are about all I can muster these days.

Our Biblical stories tell us time and again our heritage as the people of God. From our holy scriptures we have stories, and we have sentences. In both of these experiences we can find ourselves. The Rev. Karl Ernest, senior minister of First, Richardson, Texas, took time with me as a child to teach me about prayer. From him I learned that prayer was a conversation of listening and telling it was not a grocery list or a wish list, but it was an experience that was essential to my life in knowing God as revealed by Christ. Prayer was an exercise, an opportunity to discern, learn and be changed by the Holy.

While he shared many stories of the people of God beseeching, explaining, asking, complaining and even whining, he challenged me to ruminate on Psalm 37:7 .” Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Of course, as a child I first read this believing that if I can make God happy, I would get a yellow Volkswagen one day.

Schleiermacher believed that, “If we want to pray in Jesus’ name, we must first of all pray in the spirit and manner in which He was accustomed to praying “our prayers must be like Jesus’ ”. Kierkegaard wrote that “The function of prayer is not to influence God , but rather change the nature of the one who prays.”

Research from Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University, time and again demonstrates the difference between an individual being told that they are being prayed for compared to an individual who actually hears the prayer. So, I no longer promise to pray for someone without saying a prayer right then and there….no more ‘thinking about you’, just praying.

Pray with me right now please: “God above we want to experience your grace, mercy, presence in our lives. Living Eternal Word who is revealed in both what is written, spoken and heard , remind us in these days, and in each of our relationships, to practice knowing the presence of the Holy in both our self and the other. We long for you God. Amen”

Rev.Clover Bailey