Take some time to read and sit with the following quotes used in this week’s service and teaching, When You Pray, informed in part by Jesus comment on our motives for prayer and related quotes from Following the Call.
A prayer as we think about our country – and every other country – on the 4th of July weekend:
Grant to the rulers of nations faith in the possibility of peace through justice, and grant to the common people a new and stern enthusiasm for the cause of peace. Bless our soldiers and sailors for their swift obedience and their willingness to answer to the call of duty but inspire them none the less with a hatred of war and may they never for love or private glory or advancement provoke its coming. May our young men still rejoice to die for their country with the valor of their fathers but teach our age nobler methods of matching our strength and more effective ways of giving our life for the flag. – Social Gospel proponent, Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918)
Song offered in service: Your Peace Will Make Us One
A prayer as we remember our struggle to stay present to the Presence of God:
O God, we who are bound together in the tender ties of love, pray thee for a day of unclouded love.... Forgive us if we have often been keen to see the human failings, and slow to feel the preciousness of those who are still the dearest comfort of our life. May there be no sharp words that wound and scar, and no rift that may grow into estrangement.... May our eyes not be so holden by selfish-ness that we know thine angels only when they spread their wings to return to thee. – Social Gospel proponent, Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918)
Song offered in service: Amazing Grace
A poem/prayer that reminds us of the necessity of silence if we want Presence:
WORD
Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)
I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.
The self is shattered, all words torn apart
In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
I leave, returned to language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended.
I, who live by words, am wordless when
I turn me to the Word to pray. Amen.
(Following the Call, 172).
A reminder of why silence, stillness, and solitude are so important for staying present to Presence:
LISTEN IN SILENCE, because if your heart is full of other things, you cannot hear the voice of God. But when you have listened to the voice of God in the stillness of your heart, then your heart is filled with God. This will need much sacrifice, but if we really mean to pray and want to pray, we must be ready to do it now. These are only the first steps toward prayer, but if we never make the first step with a determination, we will not reach the last one: the presence of God. This is what we have to learn right from the beginning: to listen to the voice of God in our heart, and then in the silence of the heart God speaks. Then from the fullness of our hearts, our mouth will have to speak. That is the connection. In the silence of the heart, God speaks, and you have to listen. Then in the fullness of your heart, because it is full of God, full of love, full of compassion, full of faith, your mouth will speak. Remember, before you speak, it is necessary to listen, and only then, from the fullness of your heart you speak, and God listens. – Missionary in Calcutta, India, Mother Teresa (1910,1997)
Song offered in service: It Is Well
Jesus’ ongoing instruction to consider our motives, this time regarding prayer (Matthew 6:5-7 MSG):
And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for fifteen minutes of fame! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.
The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense.
On being present to Presence:
“We cannot consider the lilies without giving time to the lilies. Often our flash of haste means little. To read a book in an hour (if the book has taken half a lifetime to write) means nothing at all. To pray in a hurry of spirit means nothing. To live in a hurry means to do much but effect little. We build more quickly in wood, hay, and stubble than in gold, silver, precious stones; but the one abides, the other does not. If he who feels the world is too much with him will make for himself a little space and let his mind settle like a bee in a flower on some great word of his God, and brood over it, pondering it till it has time to work in him, he will find himself in the greenwood. He will meet his Lord there, and then quite certainly he will soon be looking with his Lord’s eyes upon the world.” – Irish missionary to India, Amy Carmichael(1867-1951)
“True Prayer seeks to commune with God, not to extract benefits from him.” – Presbyterian pastor and New Testament professor Daniel M. Doriani (1953–)
“The first and basic act of theological work is prayer.” – Swiss Reformed theologian and father or neo-orthodoxy, Karl Barth (1886-1986)
Thoughts from Pete:
Do we need, or event want to pray? What if we don’t? Does God need, or even want our prayers?
Clearly, the theme that winds through the quotes above are all encouraging us to be present to God, present to the Presence. God is the source of life, the ever-creating One who, out of love, desires the fullness that love has for us. We are invited to become what love invites at it depths. God is not a genie or Santa Claus, granting wishes and giving gifts when we’re more nice than naughty. Learning to be present to the Presence takes time and growth. The more we pay attention to it, the more likely we are to move forward. We need prayer if we want to go deep in life because it is a powerful vehicle that helps us discern True North’s direction at every moment. God needs and wants our prayers simply because God is the Lover of our souls who, out of love, simply wants engagement.
Most of us have been born into imagining a God who is separate from creation, working from above. It works at a certain level, and some discover that this view limits our capacity to be present to the Presence. This means that instead of thinking of God as “up there” somewhere over the rainbow is space, we focus on the space itself, creating space to be present. The more we do, the more likely we are to wake up at some point and recognize that we are all swimming in the sea of the Spirit. Like a fish, we are both in the sea and the sea is in us. We find ourselves engaging the journey rather than focusing on the destination. We find life sourced in the Source, and our becoming more of what love calls us to become unfolds and unfolds.
Song offered with communion: Remember
At the heart of the nature of things, there are always the dream of youth and the harvest of tragedy. The Adventure of the Universe starts with the dream and reaps tragic Beauty. This is the secret of the union of Zest with Peace: That the suffering attains its end in a Harmony of Harmonies. The immediate experience of this Final Fact, with its union of Youth and Tragedy, is the sense of Peace. – Alfred North Whitehead (last paragraph from his book, Adventures in Ideas).
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. – Apostle Paul, Romans 8:26-28 (MSG)
Primary sources, some of which are found in Following the Call.
Walter Rauschenbusch, Prayers of the Social Awakening (The Pilgrim Press, 1910), 109-110, 30.
Madeleine L’Engle, The Weather of the Heart (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1978), 60. Amy Carmichael, Gold by Moonlight (London: SPCK, 1940), 111–112. Mother Teresa, No Greater Love (Novato, CA: New World Library, 1989), 8–9, 15–16. Daniel M. Doriani, The Sermon on the Mount: The Character of a Disciple (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2006), 119–120. Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963) 160.