John Doe
April 16 2013
Encountering of Prayer
When I think of prayer, I have this image of trying to search within God’s heart. Lately, this search has increasingly taken on a feeling of stagnation and emptiness. It is as if I am right at the chamber of his heart and I am knocking on the front door; however, there is no answer. It’s frightening. When you think of prayer you hope for guidance, you pray that God will give you instructions. Within this class however, I have matured in my understanding of prayer and have developed a whole new appreciation and new hope for this pursuit. I think back to my childhood, when my mom used to tuck me into bed. I can vividly recall saying my bed time prayers with her, always thanking the Lord for what he has given me and that he would continue to bless me. I developed this routine which was good, but as time progressed it lost its meaning. It lost its significance, in a way that saying I love you often loses its significance. We throw the phrase around so often that we from time to time forget how much power and passion is behind the word and eventually it is used half-heartedly. I started to believe my time of prayer became something I did half-heartedly, it lost its significance. It’s as if I was sending God an email before bed just to check in and keep on his good side. As Nouwen put it, “I was not staying in touch with the center of my spiritual life.” I envision that it is due to the fact that I never grasped how beautiful prayer could be. It was not until one day in class when professor Au led us through an in class meditation. Going into the exercise I did not have any expectations and to be honest I was a little anxious to get out of class, as I had a lot to do later that day. However, Professor Au asked us to center ourselves; he began by telling us to listen to the sounds outside. It was a beautiful spring day, the birds were out chirping, so I decided, okay, I will play along with this one. Lone and behold, as he began to read the scripture, it immediately started to resonate with me. The passage was Luke chapter 12:24. He read the passage once through, allowed us to sit and think about it, then chose a couple of words and verses and repeated them several times. I felt like it was my lucky day, as you know, Luke chapter 12:24 is about not worrying about what one will eat or what one will do; as long as you have faith, God will take care of us. It teaches us how if God loves and takes care of the crows and the flowers, will he not do the same for us, who is much more valuable to him than the crows? This had a tremendous impact on me, as at the time and currently I have been struggling with what I will do with my life in the short term as far as summer internships and classes. I have also been struggling to understand what I am supposed to do with the long term; what’s my vocation, is my major going to help me get there, what type of women will I end up marrying? A plethora of things that is a little unnecessary to be concerned with at this time in my life. Reflecting back, the passage really helped me understand and answered the questions I would pray to God about. After that moment I gained a whole new thirst to pray with scripture. I started off in the book of John. Every morning before I start my day I begin by reading a couple of verses or if I am not in a rush it may even turn into a chapter or two. Although, I keep in mind what Henry Nouwen says in his book, “Instead of taking the words apart we should bring them together…Instead of thinking about the words for interesting dialogue or paper, we should allow them to penetrate into the most hidden corners of our heart, even to those places where no other word have found entrance.” So I consciously make an effort to read the scripture and just allow the words of the Lord to wash over me and have whatever impact they want on me, for them to fit into my own personal story. I then just like we did in class repeat a