Making It Real!

 Funny, you’d think by my age, over 60, that I had finally reached the age where I had escaped peer pressure and any kind of artificial pressure in my life.  However, it is, I think perhaps, a battle that will pursue us to the end of our days, in ways we may not even recognize.

It was just a line in the journal I am using mornings: The Best of Andrew Murray on Prayer.  He said, “But prayer that has its own life and spirit is vastly superior to any ritual form.”  As I thought about this, all the forms of ritual prayer practiced in my world shook me, albeit well-meaning ritual.

I remember a friend’s salvation being questioned when she said she did not always pray before eating. That brought to mind another friend’s proclamation that we should pray before eating anything larger than an olive, said partially in jest, but perhaps not.

We pray before eating. We pray before class – in my old world of teaching in Christian institutions.  We pray like book ends at the beginning and end of a church service or any other kind of Christian gathering.  Many believers want public schools to re-institute the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of a school day, though as someone who grew up with that in elementary school, I am not sure very many of the teachers and students who said those words were really praying them.

What struck me this morning was how bound we are by expectations and ritual, and I wondered how much of that is because they are clear and safe and we can do that much…rather than live in prayer.  That continual recognition of the presence of God. That, I think, requires active love of God  It requires a thoughtful recognition of who we are as believers in the risen Christ, the Redeemer who loves us, who pursued us and made us His own – children of God. 

I love my children.  Nothing delights me like hearing their voices, whether in a crowded room, my house or theirs, or over the telephone  or Skype.  There is something so wonderful about knowing they want to talk to me – even if it is about nothing.  And I wonder if God is not that way as well. I think about my kids all the time.  I have their pictures all over the house, and I begin every day praying for them.  And when they are facing challenges, I fill the heavens with my importunities.

I guess it boils down to love again.  If we love God, we are not satisfied with ritual, or we make ritual alive, real conversations.  That is one of the reasons I lift my hands when I pray – much of the time.  It makes it all real.  I am recognizing the presence of my God and giving Him honor.

I guess this might sound like a lot of rambling, and very personal rambling, but it was on my mind this morning – making prayer a living conversation that I pick up with God all day long – not something I have to do, like punctuation at the end of a sentence