We have so many connections in our lives we don’t know what to do with them all. On my birthday a couple of days ago I literally had hundreds of facebook wall posts, text messages, emails, cards, phone calls…. to wish me a good day. In the same vain we neglect a great number of those connections while nurturing others.
Sometimes connections are just greater for some rather than others. As I have been Reading Philip Yancy’s book “Prayer” (My first Yancy book ever that I can remember) something in the very beginning of the book caught my attention. He writes that Prayer is, “a privilege and not a duty.”
I let that simmer for a bit as I thought about the way that I approach prayer. I through about the conversations we had at Monday night small group about prayer and some of the primal questions the act of prayer brings with it. Though there may be questions about prayer, there is also this overarching understanding that our connection with God does not in any way have to be the way that it is.
There is a connection that is made through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that opens the door and the Holy Spirit then becomes the conduit for connection (or cell tower with full bars all of the time). All we need to do is to plug in and get connected.
Prayer should not be looked on a a duty but as a relationship that takes discipline (like any other) so that it may grow. Prayer offers an avenue for the veil between God and humanity to drop so that we might catch a glimpse of God in a new light. Prayer allows us to take a break from the fast paced world where we feel we have to do everything. It is an invitation to put down our baggage (if just for a bit) in hopes that we leave with less than what we came with. Prayer is a way that we can be reminded of the grandness of the world is larger than just the slice of creation (or stack of mundane to-dos) that we have right in front of us at the moment. It allow us to step back and see life from a different point of view. It allows us to be us and lets God be God.
