Doing
Prayer
The truth filters down to earth through many screens and sieves, and I
can't know while I'm on earth how valid the truth is about prayer. And
that's a good thing. Prayer is - and should be - a mystery, the greatest
mystery of all because in it you try to engage the God who is unknowable
in ordinary conversation. In prayer you
call up the eternal and ask it to be revealed to the finite. Perhaps you
whisper the Our Father as you fall asleep, and say grace over your food,
and holler "Fix this!" at God when you watch the day's depressing
news. But sometimes you can't find words, or you're so mad at God you can't
form a sentence. Or maybe you feel verbally inadequate to express your
love or anxiety or whatever. Or maybe it's just that the nonrational wins
that day. You're not just a mouth attached
to a brain: if God made all of you, then all of you needs to learn how
to communicate with God, and doing prayer responds to that need.
--from "Beyond Words: 15 Ways of Doing Prayer"
by Kristen Johnson Ingram
|