Prayer

Sometimes I do not see the connection -- or I see only a distant one -- between Oswald's chosen Scripture and his text. This may result from the fact that Oswald did not write My Utmost for His Highest in this devotional format. His wife, who was an extremely accomplished stenographer, recorded his lectures and assembled this book and others after his death. I'm not sure whether the Bible passages were part of the original lectures or not, but I'm guessing that she must have had to improvise in places.

At any rate, while today's devotional entry and the companion text are both about prayer, the former is about intercession, and the later begins a parable by Jesus on persistence in prayer. My confession is somewhat tangential to both: I don't pray. Not with any kind of consistency or depth. Rather than my prayer life improving over the years, it has deteriorated. When my children were younger, we used to sit down to dinner together with regularity, and we always prayed then. Sometimes we even shared prayer requests from our day, and my husband and I consistently prayed with our children when we put them to bed. Those two physical reminders have all but disappeared. Occasionally, I pray for inspiration before I write. Occasionally, I pray for family and friends who are ill or in trouble. Occasionally.

The death of my prayer life is most likely a result of its sickly nature in the first place. I have never felt comfortable in prayer. I have never had a sense of God listening. Perhaps I should reiterate that I do firmly believe in God. I believe in an all-mighty, all-knowing God. A sovereign God who will accomplish his will in the world, as well as in my life and the lives of those around me. I do not imagine that I can move God in prayer. (Jesus' parable on persistence in Luke 18, however, would seem to contradict that notion.) So, why pray? At least part of the answer has got to be that one cannot have a relationship with God without it, but can you pray -- talk to Someone -- without an established relationship?

Over the years, I have tried a variety of recommended methods -- visualization (imagine God there in the chair next to you); following a pattern like ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication); reading written prayers; putting the Lord's prayer in my own words; praying through the Psalms -- all with varying degrees of success and failure, but ultimately failure because I just cannot believe that the God of the universe is interested in me and my life.

I found an assignment for myself in a quote by G.K. Chesterton: "You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink." I know without doubt that I have much for which to be thankful, and perhaps if I just start by saying, "thanks," more will develop from there. It is a starting place.

Barbara