Wednesday Wonder

On one of my office bookshelves is a little stand with a plaque. The plaque says, “The first purpose of prayer is to know God.”

That sums up what I think happens in Lent if we are intentional about using the time to connect/reconnect with God, self and others.

During Lent we have had a prayer group that is learning about many ways to pray. Some of the ways maybe don’t feel like prayer since they are so different from our usual. The corporate prayers we have in worship, either spoken together or prayed while we all focus during the service, are nothing like the prayers this group has been experiencing.

Prayer does not mean always having to be talking. In fact, prayer is just as much about listening as talking, maybe even more so. The prayer group has been experiencing some times of truly listening for God.

When we stop and sit in the stillness of quiet contemplation, or read scripture and then let it resonate in us we can experience the voice of God. No, you probably won’t hear it out loud and feel like you got a definitive answer to a question. It is likely to be more like a nudge in your consciousness, or a ‘tickle in your brain.’ This may lead to clarifying thoughts if you are trying to figure out an issue in our life. Or maybe, it will be a sense of peace when you were feeling life was out of control or just not going the way it should.

Like Elijah, we often expect to find God in the grandness of life. He looked in the fire, earthquake and wind. He didn’t find God in any of these. Then there was sheer silence, and there was the still, small voice of God. God so often takes us by surprise. But we need to be watching for God.

Sitting in silence, where the voice of God is often heard, is not something that our world facilitates particularly well. And many of us struggle with silence when we do experience it. How often have you been sitting in silence thinking how long is this going to go on, only to discover it was less than a minute? Those silences we have during the prayers of the people in worship are usually between 30 and 60 seconds. Some days they may seem longer or shorter. Silence isn’t our usual state.

Lent invites us into the silence. I like to focus on prayer during Lent. You may have noticed that given the prayer prompts on the Lenten calendar and the fact that, for the second year in a row, I have offered a prayer group during these 46 days. I want to invite you into the silence as well.

There is a caution to all this. When I have been more intentional about stillness, silence and prayer, it has led to some unexpected places. This year, the quiet I share with the prayer groups, my own prayers with the calendar, and my usual prayer time (which I admit is usually full of my talking about the needs of others for whom I am concerned) as I stop talking at the end of what feels like I very long list of needs, something in me has been opened.

I have been talking about writing about women of the Bible for many years, Somehow, it never seemed to start. Well, there was an attempt a couple of years ago, but I got sidetracked and didn’t continue. This year, the silence began to move my pencil. I realized that I had been trying to write at my computer like I do for this sharing, and that wasn’t working to draw my deeper thoughts to the page. Pencil on paper in the morning stillness has started something in me that comes out, albeit in fits and starts, but coming out nonetheless. The ideas, questions and thoughts about these women are finally ending up on paper. They are not coming out as I expected, but coming out they are. God’s answer to my prayers? Maybe. God’s way of showing me that we are getting to know one another better? You bet!

We never know where prayer may take us. Just go along for the ride. “The first purpose of prayer is to know God.” Then let God help you know yourself and lead you onto your next journey.