A Word from Laura: Call to Prayer
The heat is on here in the DMV! Is the area’s first true heat wave since 2016 turning up the temperature on the stress in our lives? Or are we joining other parts of the world living with more dire effects of heat? Is the heat related to climate change (surely?) or forest fires or drought? Does it somehow affect the political unrest in Sri Lanka or need to dial back energy usage in German or effects of drought in Sudan? I’m not sure about the direct effects, but I imagine the heat doesn’t help.
In the heat of the summer, this letter is an invitation to prayer. We liberal Christians have a healthy reticence to throw prayer around – to pray too publicly or loudly or glibly. I’ve also noticed my reticence can keep me from praying at all. And when we don’t pray, we lose access to God’s best way of communicating with us. We need to hear from God, especially when things are hot.
This Sunday’s scripture passage is from Luke 11:1-13, Jesus teaching his disciples about prayer. It may find you in hot times – personally, physically, spiritually. I hope you’ll take just a few minutes to practice praying. As we get ready for Sunday, spend a few minutes with a prayer you probably already know, the Lord’s Prayer, and use this form (click here) to respond. You may take as few as five minutes or as many as ten. Here’s how it works:
· Spend a few minutes sifting through your day or your thoughts, or what is happening in your community or in the world. What is one person, place, thing or event that your mind seems to settle on?
· Pray the Lord’s Prayer with that particular person, place, thing, or event in mind, pausing after each line. What SHORT line, thought, question, phrase or sentence comes to mind? Insert that phrase in the blank below the line of the prayer in the form. Don’t be afraid to question! God can take all of our questions!
· Submit your form by 8 am on Sunday to share your responses anonymously, so that they may be incorporated into our worship prayers.
If you’re like me, even as a pastor, I can get too intimidated, frustrated, busy and restless to pray. When that happens, it helps me to remember the theologian (I’m pretty sure David Little would confirm that it was Niebuhr) who said that the point of prayer is not so much to change God, but to change us. I hope that as you engage this invitation to prayer, the same kind of prayer Jesus taught his first disciples, you might sense a refreshing something beyond explanation – maybe even a divine sense of cooling off.
May you discover in your own prayer that your mind and heart are joining God already at work,
Laura