Prayer

I've been obsessed with prayer lately. I've been trying to pray and its far more difficult than I imagined. My mind wanders upon everything other than God unless I begin a list of all these things to be thankful for and all these people to lift up and I do these fast babbling type prayers to remain focused. And I'll be honest, my heart still thinks that prayer is unproductive. Because I have no sense of the mystery of how it works and the indescribable depth and importance of prayer, I would much rather do something where the results are evident. I would much rather go to Africa then pray for those in Africa. I would much rather hang out with girls then hang out with God. When I have down time I fill it with meetings adn phone calls and emails instead of knowing that it is a precious time for God. I like to box God into my schedule as I do everything else, creating some sort of "balance." I'm not so sure what that is all about. Jesus is entirely worth every moment of my undivided attention. Yet, even when I know that prayer itself is of utmost importance, my own prayers seem awful trivial and all over the place. But then the most beautiful thing happened. I discovered Henri Nouwen, who I'm basically in love with except that he's already dead, has experienced the exact same thing. he talked about how he cant stop thinking about all these different silly things but that its totally okay because its not the point. What we must do is be faithful. The first commandment is to love God with everything. All our heart. Mind. Soul. Body. We should at least be able to offer an hour of our day just to him. not church or service or anything else. One on one. And whether that hour, he says, is practical, useful, helpful or fruitful is completely irrelevant because the only reason to love is love itself. He said, and I really think its true, that regardless of how it seems to be, it really will change everything. He is at work in us all the time. And the more we give him to work with, the more he can do.

And so, we pray. We pray much and we pray hard and we pray when were passionate and apathetic, when we are in a place eager to worship and when it is the last thing we want to do. Lets whisper the prayers of the ancients in the mornings, and follow the paths of the monks and create our own petitions for our lover. It is of utmost importance. Prayer, really, is being loved by God. Prayer is the intimacy of his presence and from that will we be able to be present to those in our lives who we love and want to minister to. I'm scared of the intimacy. I'm scared of deep prayer. And thats okay. But, God is still calling me to Himself. And we've got to go.