November 2023

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Dear Church, 

What role does prayer play in your life? I’ve been thinking about this question for myself lately, and really I think it is about how we expect God to be at work in the world. Growing up, prayer was sort of an instilled habit, parents inviting prayers at mealtimes and bedtimes. Prayers at church and at special gatherings (usually still around a meal). Every once in a while conversations in my family spoke a bit about the miraculous ways God has responded to their own prayers, but I’ll say more often than not it felt like healthy habits in gratitude alongside telling God about your day. Neither of those things are bad, in fact healthy relationships are built on communication about the little things as much as the big things, and gratitude is always a healthy practice to cultivate. Prayers built on these simple practices built my communication with God throughout my youth. 

I remember asking bigger questions about prayer when my youth pastor’s son was diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer, and died at the young age of 5. The months bearing his diagnosis and treatment were filled with prayer vigils and invitations to seek God’s healing for this young boy. What happens when our prayers do not get answered the way we hope? Do we question God’s faithfulness? Do we question our own? While God’s seeming silence echoed the loudest, I think those small practices in prayer help cultivate a relationship with God that allowed me to ask ‘why’ and ‘what are you doing in all this mess?’. The family who lost the son built a foundation to advance research for rare cancers so that other children will have better odds than theirs. And while that doesn’t make up for the loss of their son, I can see God working in the midst of the grief. 

Communicating with God through grief seems to change the shape of our expectations of who God is and what God will do. The Sunday School God of my earliest years seemed more like a genie (ask and you shall receive), and less like who I sense God is today - full of mystery, love, compassion, and action. God’s presence has been known to me in the depths of my grief - maybe not saving me from sadness, but meeting me there and offering me connection to know I am not alone. God has surprised me in providing ways forward that I did not ask for or anticipate. God has fulfilled prayers beyond what I could have imagined. My prayer life still holds the basics of gratitude and daily updates, but now alongside my grievances and petitions, I often include more invitations for God to show me what He is up to in the world. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to see? How are you at work in this mess? 

Jesus is constantly spending time in prayer throughout the gospels. Sometimes he goes away by himself to pray, sometimes he does it with his disciples or the crowds. Even on the cross, one might argue his words ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ are a prayer borrowed from the psalms. This prayer from the cross (along with the prayer in Gethsemane) opens for us the opportunity to be fully honest with God about all that we carry - laying those burdens at His feet, asking boldly for what we long for even if it isn’t what we’ll get. Praying honestly has a way of helping us know ourselves better as we bring everything before God - and can help us open our hands to what God is doing in our lives that we might ignore otherwise. 

How has prayer changed for you in your life? How does it sit with you today? How have you seen God answer prayer? What are you still waiting on? I hope you know there is no wrong or right way to pray, we are simply invited to bring ourselves before God honestly. God meets us in love, offers us compassion, and is eager to show you the power of the Spirit at work in the world today.

Many blessings for your journey,

Pastor Becca