Maybe you know the prayer circle. Folding chairs, heads bowed, and the prayer coming around the room one person at a time. Somebody prays beautifully. Somebody prays for a long while. And you spend most of the circle working out what you'll say when it gets to you. I've been in that circle. I've rehearsed in it. By the time my turn came, I was talking to the room more than to God.
Those prayers are real, and God hears every one of them. But somewhere along the way a lot of us started to believe that prayer means talking, and that the good pray-ers are the ones who can find the words.
Prayer is bigger than that. At its heart it's communion: time spent with God, in God's presence, with nothing to prove. Sometimes you speak. More often, if you let it, you listen. You stay a while with the One who has been waiting for you all along.
Someone who has carried this church's prayer life for years put it to me simply: there's a difference between praying and asking. Most of our praying is asking, and God welcomes every word of it. But asking is only one part. The rest is praise, and thanks, and just being with God.
That's what this evening is for. We're borrowing an old shape, the evening prayer service from the United Methodist Book of Worship. The lights will be low. There will be quiet music. A few short prayers will be led from the front, and then there will be silence, long enough to actually settle into. Sit wherever you like, down front or alone on the back pew. Nobody will ask you to pray out loud. If you need to slip out early, go with our blessing.
"Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). That's the whole invitation.
The service is Sunday, September 27, from 5:30 to 6:30 in the Sanctuary. It will be one hour, and we'll keep it to one. We'll gather like this every quarter, starting now.
I'd save you a seat, but you get to pick your own. That's sort of the point.
Those prayers are real, and God hears every one of them. But somewhere along the way a lot of us started to believe that prayer means talking, and that the good pray-ers are the ones who can find the words.
Prayer is bigger than that. At its heart it's communion: time spent with God, in God's presence, with nothing to prove. Sometimes you speak. More often, if you let it, you listen. You stay a while with the One who has been waiting for you all along.
Someone who has carried this church's prayer life for years put it to me simply: there's a difference between praying and asking. Most of our praying is asking, and God welcomes every word of it. But asking is only one part. The rest is praise, and thanks, and just being with God.
That's what this evening is for. We're borrowing an old shape, the evening prayer service from the United Methodist Book of Worship. The lights will be low. There will be quiet music. A few short prayers will be led from the front, and then there will be silence, long enough to actually settle into. Sit wherever you like, down front or alone on the back pew. Nobody will ask you to pray out loud. If you need to slip out early, go with our blessing.
"Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). That's the whole invitation.
The service is Sunday, September 27, from 5:30 to 6:30 in the Sanctuary. It will be one hour, and we'll keep it to one. We'll gather like this every quarter, starting now.
I'd save you a seat, but you get to pick your own. That's sort of the point.
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