As a child of the church I was taught about prayer and how to pray very early in life. I’m fairly certain my introduction to prayer would have been around the dinner table as we said grace before eating. For my own children I know that is their first encounter with prayer. When we sit down to dinner each night my 3 year old leads us in a simple prayer and our 1 year old chimes in with an enthusiastic “Ah-me” at the end.
As I have grown in my prayer life I have come to understand that prayer is more like having a conversation with God and a sharing of my life, my thoughts, my very self with God. But today I was reminded of another important aspect of prayer. I’m reading the book Turn My Mourning into Dancing by Henri Nouwen. In the chapter I was reading today Henri says this about prayer,
““As you enter into intimate communion with God, you enter into intimate communion with the people of God. Prayer is communion with God in the privacy of our own places. It is also communion with the people of God around the world and through the centuries. Such love allows us to let go of our little fears. This may seem difficult, but such love, as it works in us, ultimately offers us a way out of self-righteousness and oppression. It rescues us from the illusion that makes the rich think they know what is best for the poor, men think they know what is best for women, or whites think they know what is best for blacks.””
Yes, prayer is a personal and private conversation with God. In prayer we are able to come before God in our raw, unfiltered moments of grief, shame, anger, and doubt. And yet prayer is also something that connects us to the people of God in every time and place. In prayer we not only lift up what is on our hearts but we also pray on behalf of others, of our communities, of places in our world we have never visited, for struggles and situations in which we are not directly affected. We do this because we believe in that power of prayer. We believe in the community action and support that is found in a rich life of prayer. We believe in God who hears our prayers and responds in love and that God does the same for those we would consider other.
In our current reality you many find that you have a long list of people, places, and situations that you are lifting up to the Lord in prayer. While you are taking those moments in solitude to pray I hope you remember that in your prayer you are connected to so many believers - those who attend your church, live in your community, your nation, the world, in every time that has been. When we recognize this deep connection we can more easily set aside those fears that hold us, those assumptions that limit us, and those boundaries that divide us.
