PRAYER Living in the Element of God
Prayer is an element of our human condition.
With our humanity comes the awareness of the dynamic being beyond and greater than ourselves and our being reaches out to communicate. Most elemental for us is the extreme crisis when, “God help me, God help us!” springs unbidden from the depths of our being. We reach out instinctively for power and help from another level and God is present before we cry out.
Prayer is our response to the beauty of creation. Walking on the beach, kayaking in the marshes, biking through the woods, we become still and our souls open to the power and peace of creation. We pray in adoration and our spirits soar beyond words.
Praying as a Christian. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Prayer goes beyond the physical creation. The life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus - the Incarnation - has become part of our DNA.
Our reflection on the person of Jesus, hearing and responding to the Gospel and receiving the sacraments time after time has imprinted that ‘event’ in our spirit. God’s incarnation through Jesus brought God close to us in compassion and grace. For the Jews, the Tabernacle and the Temple was the location where prayer was offered. The most significant prayer was offered by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies where God was present. The meaning of the Incarnation is that GOD IS WITH US. The presence of the divine close to us, within us, in our contingent, temporal locale does not mean that God’s holiness is less or diminished, rather we recognize the ordinary, down to earth, transformed as “holy space.”
Recognizing “The Holy” first increases our sense of being unworthy. The prophet Isaiah experiencing the power and holiness of God’s presence cried, “I am a man of unclean lips‘‘ (Full story Isaiah 6: 1-6) Now, as we grasp the grace and compassion of God shown in Jesus life, we are free and empowered to talk to God as family, “Abba, Father.“ So, the glory of prayer through Christ is that as individuals and as a community, we can pray confidently and powerfully, as Jesus did. Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. (Hebrews 10: 22) Prayer is our spoken and unspoken walk with God. We do not always consciously verbalize prayer. As our conscious and unconscious spirit tries to make God, our Christ DNA, present in the world, we are praying always.
Lilias Morrison
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