I must say I write this post with great trepidation. Prayer has so often been misunderstood and misused. It is something of such profound depth, that can be made so easily trite. How often do we use ‘we should pray about this’ to avoid the prayer of the feet and hands? Yet we should pray – is about as close to the heart of what I have seen already renewing the church.
For prayer at its heart is our turning towards God and opening our lives to God’s action in our lives. Prayer is not limited to an attempt to have God magically fulfill our requests, rather it is a process where consciously enter into relationship with God so that that relationship can change us. To say that we should pray about this, is in fact profound, for it mean that for this we should open our lives to God’s will and God’s action. It is a conscious action to turn from our own ways; from how things are; from how we think things should go and it is a turning to the power and possibility of God’s action heard though a still and quite voice.
To sit in silence, turning all of our thoughts, our ambitions, our worries over to God; to allow all the commotion of our egos, especially our religious egos, to becoming still; to wait and be open to God’s transforming breath – this is perhaps one of the most profound acts of transformation that we can begin with and then from that silence to pray with our feat, with our hands, with our voice, and in community. This is the thundering whisper of renewal.
Sit in God’s presence, breath in God’s breath, until in our stillness we are transfigured and we learn to truly act.
PT
What if...? 