Last week I got a lesson in prayer. Our youngest daughter was in the ICU for most of the week. Not much else matters when one you love, especially one so vulnerable, is hurting and in danger. So I prayed. A lot. And many faithful people prayed for us and with us. The sheer fact of prayer was deeply overwhelming to me.
As Christians, prayer is our real work. The rest is details. Last week was a reminder of this truth for me.
But what about our “non crisis” weeks? These words about prayer being our real work are easy to say, but often not so easy to put into practice.
Practical Deists?
Among many things, prayer awakens us the omnipresence of God.
Much ink has been spilled on whether or not the Founding Fathers of the United States were Christian. I am not terribly interested in wading into these waters, except to touch on one critical early Statesman: Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson has left many legacies for us to wrestle with, but one of his most lasting ones is that many of us are “practical Deists.” Deism, simply put, is the belief in a god who sets the world in motion and then sits back, not really intervening. This, of course, is not the God of the Bible, for the LORD is an active God, always intervening in history, always on the move. The God of the Bible is the one who becomes incarnate, who takes our flesh upon himself, who walks around down here, not just “up there.”
While I think most of us would denying being Deists in a formal sense, in our everyday lives we find ourselves “practical Deists”: that is, we live from day to day in a way that suggests that God is at best, distant, and at worst, uninterested. In fact, God, though often invisible, is very close by, as near as our heartbeat. Of course, discerning God’s presence is tricky, but the fact of God’s presence is the consistent witness of Scripture. Prayer, practiced most fully, is a cultivated awareness and reception of God’s presence among us and near us.
Lord’s Prayer Under the Faucet
I also picked up a new spiritual discipline this past week: praying the Lord’s Prayer while washing my hands. They say good hand washing takes soap, warm water, and a least 30 seconds. I found myself praying, in word and in song, the Lord’s Prayer each time I washed my hands. I recalled my baptism as the water flowed… as well as my own sinfulness as I remembered that hand washing was also what Pontius Pilate did.
A few other notes…
Serving Opportunity: Thursday (2/19)
Rosalyn Goodwin of the Sparrow’s Nest (a homeless shelter for women) in Toledo will be here at Bethlehem on Thursday, February 19th from 5:30-6:30 pm in the lounge to lead an orientation to the Sparrow’s Nest ministry. All who might be interested in volunteering with this ministry (now or in the future) are invited to attend.
Sermons and Teaching Online
In case you missed worship, sermons are now available online. If I get it figured out, our adult Sunday school classes may also be available online. Ah, technology.