In January I identified three action steps to prioritize for the year. Pray, Learn and Encourage.
The first few weeks of the year have brought their mix of illness, boredom, joys and problems. The perfect laboratory to put my priorities to the test.
I put prayer at the top of this list as a nod to the conviction that I need God’s strength, love and kindness to overcome my inclination toward worry and despair. I believe that Living Faith*Fully requires prayerful intention. But writing it down doesn’t make it so, and as 2024 gets underway, I recognize an old pattern. When it comes to prayer, I believe in it; I just find it hard to do.
What’s Getting My Attention?
I’m not alone in my ambivalence about prayer. I’ve been to lots of prayer meetings where the time set aside for prayer gets lost in discussion leaving only precious minutes for the actual prayer. A 2005 Barna survey found that even pastors ranked prayer last among their ministry priorities.
The world is filled with a cacophony of chaos wooing my mind toward fear inducing alarms and my eyes to blinding advertisements and threatening headlines. What will it take to extract myself from this bedlam to communicate with God?
Karen Swallow Prior in her SUBSTACK newsletter, begins with an epigraph quoting Simone Weil, “Absolute unmixed attention is prayer.” It has seemed to me that one of the biggest barriers to my prayer has been time. But Weil’s words make me wonder if, “I don’t have enough time,” is just cover for a more fundamental problem. Do I fear I can’t really focus my attention on just one thing? Does the visible world block my entry into a spiritual realm where I am invited to truly focus? Such a realm both attracts and intimidates me. If I try to pray but find myself distracted, will it be evidence that I have failed?
Do I avoid prayer because I can’t seem to tune my senses to the undistorted sound waves of God’s character? What if heartfelt prayer is not long or short so much as it is engaged?
What’s Taking My Time?
As I made time to write today, I was thinking of “getting this post done.” Hands to the keyboard, I began to type an introduction when it occurred to me that I should probably write about prayer after I had, you know, prayed. Overcoming my frustration that this would slow me down, I did my best to clear my mind, to recall why I had chosen the topic and to ask the Holy Spirit to bring to mind those things that would be helpful to me and to my readers. I consciously worked to set aside my hurry and to quiet my thoughts. I’m not exactly sure that I achieved “unmixed attention”, but I tried. After a few minutes, it seemed clear that the desire to get started writing was the right thing to do. “But I haven’t prayed long enough,” my inner critic complained. So, I prayed about not praying long enough, and as I did the pathway ahead invited me to return to my writing.
Am I learning that God meets me at the point of intention even when the effort is imperfect?
Each situation is unique, but on this day, a short prayer served to confirm the direction I was inclined to go.
These musings lead me to ask if I even know what I mean when I say the word prayer. Is it talking to God, hearing from God, meditating about God? Is it done in secluded quiet places, or with both God and a community of those who trust him? Is it words, or thoughts, or groaning, cries for help or jubilant leaps of gratitude?
Yes
“Pray without ceasing,” the apostle Paul instructed (I Thessalonians 5:16). Which seems to say that prayer is integrated in many forms with the excess of events that make up daily life. A continuous review of the Gospels illustrates that this is the way that Jesus prayed. Traveling from place to place, meeting with large crowds, gathering with his closest friends, sending everyone away to be alone, asking his disciples to pray with him, offering public prayers in worship, thanksgiving and petition.
What Brings Me Peace?
My action steps for 2024 begin with the desire to pray that I will be an instrument of peace. Seems ironic when even my intention to pray stirs up so much anxiety in me. Colossians 3: 14 admonishes us to “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace and be thankful.”
So far this year, I am thankful for the opportunity to examine how and when I pray. Living Faith*Fully clears the way for the peace of Christ to rule in my heart, not by an act of disciplined obligation, but by trying, failing, and trying again to gratefully accept God’s invitation to bring my attention, maybe even my “unmixed attention” into his presence.