When you actually stop and think about it prayer is unbelievable – in the awestruck sense! One simple, everyday word that means approaching the Creator, Eternal God, and being invited not just to an audience with majesty but also being invited to climb onto our Father’s knee.
Last week I was involved in ‘prayer week’ at the local secondary school (one of the things I do is being an active member of the school’s chaplaincy team). It’s a week when one of the year groups gets brought to a prayer discovery/experience lesson led by us as part of the RE curriculum. We then also go and visit RE lessons and answer questions and chat together about their thoughts on Christians and prayer.
Of course not all students are Christians and the activities we plan hope to open up discussion and a chance to chat with us as chaplains about our experience of prayer and what it means to us. We even decided to make 1 min ‘what prayer means to me’ videos this year that could be used in classes! Scary!
Lots of the discussions I had were so interesting, hearing why students thought we might pray, and why they didn’t. It was good to have that space to chat honestly about faith together. I love doing things like this – despite it terrifying me! – the conversations are so real, no facades.
One comment in particular stuck me, that prayer sounds scary. Yes, I think it does when you stop and think about it. I mean we really, genuinely believe prayer is communicating with God the Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit…don’t we? Not just words of comfort said in hope that someone might be listening. Not wishing. Not putting coins into the vending machine to get what’s on our list. Christians dare to believe that prayer is communication with God. That student’s comment made me wonder about how mundane and chore like we can often make prayer sound like – to others and perhaps to ourselves too.
Prayer is such an unexpected invitation. A privilege. A crazy, unbelievable conversation. We can be ourselves, we can speak and the Bible suggests that Father God enjoys listening, and wants us to come to him as Dad! How unexpected is that.
The day to day modelling and teaching about prayer continues in our family life – with its ups and downs, questions and wonderings. Prayer out loud together with each other can seem rare and surprising. But God’s greater than all that, listening and present and constantly drawing us into conversation. The other night T didn’t actually say ‘No’ when I asked if there was anything she wanted to talk with God about, and there was a little pause of quiet followed by a ‘yep, done it!’. I smiled, and felt fairly certain Father God did too.