I like to think of prayer as a conversation with God. One of the reasons I like meditative practices is it’s an opportunity for me to stop making noise long enough and perhaps listen so the other party has a chance to respond. (More on meditation later…) Sometimes I believe I’m hearing back. Sometimes the other party seems to butt in.
Last week I had the opportunity to ride my motorcycle from Calgary to Hinton Alberta and back. Believe it or not, this was a business trip. The shortest route was via the Icefields Parkway which runs from just west of Lake Louise to Jasper. It passes the Columbia Icefields and follows the Athabasca River north from there. Another not-ugly route. The weather on the way up was gorgeous but on the way back it was cold and raining from time to time.
As I often do on my bike, I was praying on the way back as I was getting closer to Lake Louise. I actually like to pray out loud and, on my Harley, wearing a full face helmet, on a fairly deserted bit of highway, I was not too self-conscious about being overheard. I was saying prayers of gratitude for the gorgeous scenery, the opportunity to make the trip, and my life in general. The rain was coming and going and in the midst of the cold and rain, the sun suddenly broke through the clouds and warmed my chilled body for maybe 20 or 30 seconds, right in the middle of my prayers. That was a surprise . My next thought was “Thanks for the hug!” It felt really amazing.
So what was that? A coincidence of meteorology? Perhaps I should throw all my engineering and mathematical tools at this incident so I can properly label it. Or I could just say thanks for what felt to me like a response to my prayers.
Have you had similar experiences? How do you experience God’s response to your prayers?
By Charlie October 12, 2012 - 7:32 pm
Hi Mark. Turning off the chatterbox inside can be – well,no, is really hard. It would be nice to have a ‘mute’ button like the one one the channel selector. The problem with that, of course is that it would make things too easy. This must be why people go off into the desert; or maybe into a religious house for 10-14 days for the silence, the community prayers and maybe some one-on-one. After all Jesus encouraged the disciples to do it when they were all worked up about (whatever) – Come apart and rest for a while – (( I’ll lose this letter if I google the quote – sorry)). So there it is; God sees the need in advance and steers you towards the answer.
But have you ever noticed a parallelism between our day-to-day problems and our spiritual problems? – which can easily be daily as well, mind you….
Let’s see if an example helps. My balance is not perhaps my strongest point – well, not since I broke my hip anyway. (no big deal.) So: I trip – “oh god!” or similar – note small’g’ and dust myself off – oooh – meaning quick -kleenex so no bloodstain where my knee is touching my pants. End of part one. Now, things seem to be going OK until something – what (oh a snarky remark to one of my fellow condo tenants) who cares whether it was deserved or not – it shouldn’t have been made at all. Then it’s a case of ‘Oh God’ – note capital G — with undertones of sorrow/mercy/forgiveness. That’s when He picks me up, so to speak, “There, there,get going again” — all on the understanding of course that I’m going to apologize to the person I was rude to!
But a far more general answer and maybe not satisfactory is that there are as many answers as there are ‘pray-ers’. But as to how the individual response is made, well, as a musician you’d be familiar with the term ‘variations on a theme.’
I didn’t know there was an Anglican Fellowship of Prayer?
By Charlie October 12, 2012 - 7:32 pm
Hi Mark. Turning off the chatterbox inside can be – well,no, is really hard. It would be nice to have a ‘mute’ button like the one one the channel selector. The problem with that, of course is that it would make things too easy. This must be why people go off into the desert; or maybe into a religious house for 10-14 days for the silence, the community prayers and maybe some one-on-one. After all Jesus encouraged the disciples to do it when they were all worked up about (whatever) – Come apart and rest for a while – (( I’ll lose this letter if I google the quote – sorry)). So there it is; God sees the need in advance and steers you towards the answer.
But have you ever noticed a parallelism between our day-to-day problems and our spiritual problems? – which can easily be daily as well, mind you….
Let’s see if an example helps. My balance is not perhaps my strongest point – well, not since I broke my hip anyway. (no big deal.) So: I trip – “oh god!” or similar – note small’g’ and dust myself off – oooh – meaning quick -kleenex so no bloodstain where my knee is touching my pants. End of part one. Now, things seem to be going OK until something – what (oh a snarky remark to one of my fellow condo tenants) who cares whether it was deserved or not – it shouldn’t have been made at all. Then it’s a case of ‘Oh God’ – note capital G — with undertones of sorrow/mercy/forgiveness. That’s when He picks me up, so to speak, “There, there,get going again” — all on the understanding of course that I’m going to apologize to the person I was rude to!
But a far more general answer and maybe not satisfactory is that there are as many answers as there are ‘pray-ers’. But as to how the individual response is made, well, as a musician you’d be familiar with the term ‘variations on a theme.’
I didn’t know there was an Anglican Fellowship of Prayer?
By Charlie October 12, 2012 - 7:46 pm
Citation for Come apart and rest… Mark 6.31