How we pray often defines our belief. The phrase Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi (law of prayer is law of belief) plays a pivotal role in our Anglican theology. We pray with all our senses. We pray throughout all times of the day. We pray in different seasons of the year. See a common thread? If we’re doing all that is offered to us through the Book of Common Prayer, if our clergy are helping us understand the importance of prayer, and if we stop to take time for prayer? Well, life becomes more manageable.
So why does it matter how we pray? I mean, we can just pray once a day, right? Surely God is powerful enough to give us whatever we want in return for a few minutes of prayer each day. Why in the world would we need to communicate with God more than that…God’s a busy God.
In short: No, not right.
Imagine this: You are deeply in love with someone. This person holds your heart in inexplicable ways, they have become so integral to who you are that losing them would break you in many ways. Did that love grow from one conversation a week? Did you fall in love with your person because you spent a few minutes a day talking to them? In your memories, are they a fraction of what constitutes your life’s meaning? I can tell you right now that I continue to fall deeply in love with Nicole on the daily. You know why? Because we talk. We talk about inane things, serious things, and everything in between.
And when we aren’t together, sometimes we just call and leave the line quiet as each of us does our own thing.
This allows us to grow together, not apart; to face daily life and know that we have each other. So, what if you’re single? Widowed? I imagine you have friends or family with whom you share a special relationship. Not the same, yet not diminished. Not greater than or less than, just different. The relationship is still vital to who you are and serves as a major part of your life.
Now, apply that to God. Do you talk to God, daily? Do you share your frustrations, fears, joys, dreams, and inane goings-on with God? Do you sometimes just sit in companionable silence, not asking for anything, with God? Do you make time to grow into deeper relationship, or is the five minutes enough?
Once I asked myself these questions, the answer was clear: I need—I desire—to be in deeper conversation with God. I want to wake with my first words being directed toward God and I want to fall asleep with my last words being in praise and love of God’s name. How can I do that? The answer: By being faithful in my prayer life; not just when things are bad or good, but in the ‘normal’ times, too. Don’t you agree? Isn’t God the reason why we’re here, the gathering force of grace that compels us to community and action?
That’s how we can approach it. We can stand in awe or whisper through tears on our knees; we can see the beauty of nature around us; we can hear the laughter of children in our midst; we can taste the communion…
And through those moments of prayer, we can reach out and touch the face of God.
Faithfully,
Fr. Sean+